


Footprints in the Sands of Time

by MaverickWerewolf



Category: A Shielding Thing, Original Work, Wulfgard
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Original Universe, also rarely some lite smut, mostly will be pleasant things, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2019-05-16 23:37:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 48
Words: 30,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickWerewolf/pseuds/MaverickWerewolf
Summary: A collection of various random Wulfgard (my original fantasy universe) drabbles I've written for prompt fills and/or my own amusement. Mostly just fun character exploration.Sadja and Sinvik are, as always, of Taff's creation. Featured with permission.





	1. Dancing Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Some of these prompts were written before I, essentially, started switching writing styles from whatever it was I was doing before to close third, with a much more personal tone in terms of the narrator. So not all of these are going to reflect how I currently tend to write.

The woods were thick, yet it wasn’t hard for Tom Drake to find the leathery, spearheaded demon tail hanging from the branches near a small, convenient clearing. Grabbing it, he gave it a hearty tug – enough to elicit a jolt and a yelp from the boughs above.

“Kye, c’mon,” Drake said. “Hiding won’t do you any good.”

Kye’s tall silhouette moved in the treetop, and Drake let go of his tail so the demon-kin could climb down. It was funny to look at him now and think he was trying to prepare someone like this to go to a royal ball. You know, the guy with huge, bat-like demon wings sprouting from his back, a tail, fangs, a huge left gauntlet with spikes and claws…

Drake frowned and pretended to size him up as he circled him. Kye rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand, turning to face Drake as he walked around.

“Will you stop?” Drake said, though he fought back a laugh. “If you start spinning in circles when the tailor’s sizing you up, you’re gonna frustrate the shit out of him.”

“Sorry,” Kye replied promptly, standing still.

Just like Drake thought, he was going to need serious work. But, sure, Kye was a handsome guy, especially if all the stares he got when he rode down the street were any indication. Tall, muscular… tall, dark, and handsome, really. Put simply, he was striking.

When he didn’t have horns on his forehead, at least. He even had a second, longer pair curling back on top of his head, just to make sure everyone knew he had horns, as if the pointed ears and every other demonic feature didn’t give it away. He also had purple hair, most of it pulled behind his neck in a ponytail.

And then there were those confused, bright violet eyes that kept staring at him. This time, Drake couldn’t help but grin.

“First thing’s first,” he said, “I need to warn you about actually wearing a complete shirt, not that weird back-less jerkin thing.”

Kye suddenly looked morose, though his tail kept endlessly waving back and forth behind him, like it always did. “But – what about my wings?”

“If they pop out, you’re screwed either way, so there’s no reason to leave room for them. Besides,” he glanced at Kye’s back – a complete mess of crisscrossing whip scars with huge, jagged rune scar carved there by a knife set in the foreground – and frowned, “ _that’s_ the last thing you want anyone to see, other than all these demon bits.”

“Right, yeah, okay…”

“The clothes are gonna be pretty tight, too. Show off your physique, and all that.”

Kye grunted. “Sure, great…”

“And you’ll have to lose the gauntlet,” Drake finished, grabbing and holding up the huge, heavy metal thing that went all the way up Kye’s left forearm, ending in a set of long spikes coming off his elbow.

Kye tugged it away from him, nervously rubbing his metal claws together. “That…” he swallowed mid-sentence. “That – doesn’t come off.”

Drake arched a brow. “Why not?”

The demon-kin looked away from him and said quietly, “It’s a long story, Tom.”

Silence fell so abruptly that they were left listening to the pleasant songbirds chirping away in the trees – which, somehow, made the silence even more awkward. Even for Kye, that was a strange tone. But Drake shrugged.

“Alright,” he said, “it’ll be a fashion statement. Sure.” He clapped Kye on the shoulder. “So, last thing: you know how to dance, right?”

It took a moment before Kye looked at him again, staring dumbly. Drake waited patiently for him to find some words.

Finally, Kye asked in a tiny voice, “What’s, uh… What’s dancing?”

Drake’s face went blank.

That lasted for a second or two before he suddenly laughed. Kye’s face went red, and Drake felt worse, but he kept grinning.

“Oh, gods, Kye – it’s not funny—” Drake said quickly, though he laughed again and had to stop himself. “You’re just so _hopeless,_ and it’s adorable.”

Kye looked miserable and rubbed at the back of his neck again, his tail giving one sharp jerk out of rhythm before resuming its back-and-forth waving.

“Look, I’m sorry. I’m an ass.” Drake cleared his throat. “Dancing is, ah… something people do to…”

“Flirt with girls?” Kye said in a tone that sounded like he assumed everything Drake was knowledgeable about eventually came down to flirting. Which wasn’t _entirely_ true.

Still, Drake made a thoughtful face. “Well, _yeah,_ but it’s kind of more a cultural thing. It’s important to know, anyway, if you’re going to blend in with… you know, mortals.”

Kye nodded quietly.

“Look, I’ll show you.” Drake stepped up in front of him, taking Kye’s left hand and putting it on his shoulder, taking Kye’s right hand in his left and holding it, just before resting his own right hand on Kye’s hip.

Kye made an odd face at him that really showed all his long, sharp canines, but Drake just arched a brow.

“I didn’t say it wouldn’t be awkward.”

Then he abruptly pulled Kye right against his body, and Kye’s face went red.

“That doesn’t seem – really – do you have to—?”

Kye stopped sputtering but quickly reached down, grabbed Drake’s hand on his hip, and moved it up to his rough, scarred back instead, just below a wing. Drake managed not to laugh.

“Your back doesn’t have the most romantic texture, Kye,” Drake remarked. “But, luckily for you, girls love scars.”

He then led Kye around in a dance – Drake was graceful and practiced, but Kye kept stumbling and stepping on Drake’s feet, his tail going to and fro even faster than usual in frustration and flicking around erratically.

“Tom, this – this is impossible,” Kye blurted. “What’s the _point?”_

“I thought you get all gooey when you think about these endearing things mortals do,” Drake said with a grin. “And if you can climb buildings and jump around on them in the dark, Kye, you can dance. Just follow my lead.”

Drake didn’t go easy on him. He swiveled him, he dipped him, and the entire time, Kye sputtered and occasionally tried to pull free of his grip, but Drake never let him. And he wore a grin almost half the time.

Finally, Drake grabbed one of Kye’s legs to hook it around his hip, dipped him again, dramatically, and then finally let Kye scramble away from him, red in the face. Drake gave a little bow.

“See? That wasn’t so hard. I kept it simple, and you did pretty good for a beginner.”

Kye frowned, staring up at some clouds like he did so often, still blushing unbelievably.

“There’s no _way_ I can do all that with a random person,” he finally said flatly. “Or… _anybody.”_

“Well, you can stand in the corner and drink wine instead,” Drake replied. “Later, I’ll show you where the royal gardens are, since that seems more like your thing. But trust me, dancing is fun.”

For a second, it almost looked like Kye believed him. The demon-kin resumed rubbing the back of his neck some more and stared at the ground instead before, eventually, he looked up to meet Drake’s green-and-gold eyes again.

“Why can’t _you_ just go?” Kye finally asked. “I’m a disaster waiting to happen.”

Drake frowned. “Kye, you’re _not,”_ he answered, finally serious – serious enough that it surprised Kye, from the way his purple eyes blinked. “Stop being so down on yourself.”

After a brief bout of hesitation, Kye tried again: “Is everyone else coming, too? I mean, we all know you’re just gonna go flirt with a bunch of girls, and then Magnhild will glare at you the entire time, and…”

Drake’s mind generally moved at top speed, and often pretty erratically. So when it hit a stone wall, it could be painful – like right now.

He blurted, “She _what?”_

Kye blinked. “Oh. I, um… thought you knew she did that…”

Drake was about to say something more, before he realized that, if he tried, he’d end up sputtering and sounding like Kye did half the time. So, instead, he took a second to compose himself.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Drake said, giving Kye another friendly smack on the shoulder. He always kept those gentle, but Kye still winced every time, anyway. “Practice dancing with a branch or something.”

“Okay,” Kye replied, but Drake knew immediately from his tone that he was going to just go sit in a tree and listen to birds and stare at clouds some more. And probably leave his tail hanging down conspicuously again – not that Kye ever seemed terribly aware of what his tail was doing.

Drake offered him an encouraging smile. “You’re gonna do great,” he said, just before he turned and left to go find Magnhild and the others again.

Now he almost felt bad for teaching Kye the girl’s part of the dance.


	2. What Would Caiden Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the modern-day world of monster hunting, Caiden and Gwen are delayed from a mission when Caiden finds out Gwen's been running a Twitter account for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt fill written for OCtober on r/fanfic, to show characters using social media (so this one is, of course, tossing some Wulfgard characters into modern day).

Almost the instant he’d woken up that morning, Caiden had reminded Gwen they had another mission that day: apparently, some unknown threat had moved into a suburban area not far from where they lived. Locals kept shouting about pranksters. But all the evidence pointed toward ghouls. Big difference… not that most people knew that.

So, of course, it wasn’t long before Caiden was standing by the door, bristling with all his armor, guns, and gear, quadruple-checking a tricked-out assault rifle. Gwen sauntered over to him, all her weapons already holstered. But she paused when she reached her partner, as she realized he wasn’t checking his gun a fifth time. He was looking at his _phone._

“You okay, Caid?” she asked, arching a long, thin brow. “You aren’t sick, are you?”

He gave a brief, quiet growl in his throat. “Tom said he likes my Twitter account.”

Gwen tried not to burst into laughter on the spot. “Did he now?”

Caiden was far too perceptive to let the innocent hint of a smile on her lips slip past him, and he held his smartphone up in her face. She was presented with a simplistic Twitter account page for one Caiden Voros, which had tweeted several things, all with the same hashtag:

“Eat it. #WWCD”

In a reply to the above tweet, “No or minimal chewing.”

“Narrow eye at it. #WWCD”

“Growl at it. Show teeth. #WWCD”

“Punch it. #WWCD”

“Maybe get a lip twitch. #WWCD”

There were assorted other tweets in the same vein. Gwen had to grin at her own handiwork.

“Knew it,” Caiden said flatly.

“It’s all in good fun, Caid,” Gwen replied, not at all worried that _she_ would get punched… although Caiden narrowed his one blue eye at her, right on cue. “You said you never wanted a Twitter account, so I made one for you. You have a lot of fans.”

Caiden grunted. “Tell them to join the Venatori, then.” But he slid his phone back into a pocket, slung his assault rifle on his back, and turned to lay a hand on the doorknob. Gwen took the opportunity to slip her own phone from her pocket and quickly click it on, her thumbs working furiously.

Her partner stopped and looked back at her, watching silently for a second before prompting, “You ready?”

Gwen stayed logged into Caiden’s would-be Twitter account on her phone for moments just like this one. Her eyes darted over her tweet one final time…

“Focus on the mission. #WWCD”

And then she posted it.

Looking up at Caiden again and putting her phone away, she replied with a smile, “Let’s go.”


	3. Pretty Flowers, Pretty World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the modern age, Tom has either the terrible or wonderful idea of getting Kye a smartphone - and social media accounts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt fill written for OCtober on r/fanfic, to show characters using social media (so this one is, of course, tossing some Wulfgard characters into modern day).

“Kye, look,” said Drake, as he handed Kye a flat, rectangular black thing. The demon-kin took it, tail flicking once in confusion. “This is the digital age, so it’s time you caught up. Here’s a smartphone, and I already set up a bunch of bullshit social media accounts, so you can screw around on there.”

Kye turned it over in his hands, his claws scraping the shiny finish. He made a face at it. “How’s it work?”

Drake clicked a little button on the side and a screen came on. He moved his finger around on it and things happened. Kye watched, dumbstruck.

“I’m afraid, ah… you’re gonna have to use it one-handed,” Drake pointed out. “Claws and touchscreens don’t mix. So look, here’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blah blah blah…”

“What’re all those things?”

Drake thought about that for a second. “Well,” he replied, “Facebook is where you collect all these ‘friends’ you don’t really know and then brag about things you do to make all your non-friends on your friends list feel bad.”

Kye blinked. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”

“It isn’t. Twitter is where you post little tiny messages for brevity’s sake, I think it was started as some kinda artsy thing. But most people just make huge threads of messages anyway, so it defeats the point.”

“Okay…”

“Aaand Instagram is for images. That’s mostly it.”

Kye furrowed his brow. “So… what’s the point?” He paused. “This seems like something demons of Pride would invent.”

Drake laughed. “They probably did, but you’re never gonna fit in with mortals if you ask questions like that. Now here, give it a shot…”

Kye flicked around blindly on the phone and ended up tapping a picture of some multicolored thing, which was apparently Instagram. And he was instantly assaulted by a picture of Drake standing over the corpse of a wyvern with a sword sticking out of its head. He was looking at the camera and giving a thumbs-up. The description read, “Beat @gnaeusthegreatest to that wyvern he mentioned. Try to keep up, buddy! #wrekt”

“Oh, yeah, all your accounts already follow mine,” Drake added casually. “‘Cause, y’know.”

“I _don’t_ know,” Kye replied, quite honestly.

Drake frowned. “Well, there’s this whole…” he gestured vaguely. “Look, you’re not ready for me to talk about follower, ah, _measuring_ yet. I’m gonna take you somewhere scenic and you can take some pictures, okay?”

Kye was completely lost.

But it didn’t take long for Drake to get him on the back of his motorcycle – because of course he had a motorcycle, and of course Kye had to ride on the back – and drive at breakneck speeds to some park somewhere. Kye lost track of where they were going when he shoved his face into the back of Drake’s shoulder and held on for dear life.

When they arrived, Kye promptly got to work. He had no trouble finding subjects for posts, as he was now surrounded by brightly-colored flowers, trees, singing birds, a running stream, sunshine, a blue sky with just enough puffy clouds of white to make perfect pictures, and… Well, anyway, it was a wonderland.

In an hour and a half, Kye returned to Drake, who was busy lounging in the shade of a tree. And Kye said flatly, “My phone won’t take anymore pictures.”

Drake took it and his eyes went wide. “Kye, you filled up this entire phone in less than two hours. The hell were you even doing?”

Kye rubbed the back of his neck. “I… was taking pictures of pretty things.”

Drake flipped through the great Instagram spam on the demon’s account. It was pictures of everything. Trees, bark, leaves, flowers, insects, birds, the sky, clouds, sunlight filtering through the leaves, and videos of birdsongs, videos of running water, videos of…

“You think everything is pretty,” Drake said flatly.

The descriptions were lackluster, though, especially given Kye had next to no idea what he was looking at half the time, so there were certainly no specifics on tree or flower types. One post read, “Pretty flower. #flowers”

Kye blushed fiercely and retorted in a mumble, “That stuff _is_ pretty.”

Drake shrugged and said, “I won’t argue. You’re, uh… artistic, actually. These are really good. Although people like it if you slap a filter on things.”

Kye frowned. “They make it not pretty anymore.”

Drake couldn’t help but grin. Getting to his feet, he put an arm around Kye’s shoulders and led him back toward the dreaded motorcycle.

“C’mon,” he said, laughing, “let’s go get you the biggest memory card we can find.”


	4. A Demon in Human's Clothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kye ends up at a ball - and in fancy clothing. To say the least, it's not his scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt - Kye in formalwear.

Kye rubbed the back of his neck, feeling stupid. He shifted his weight between his feet, watching the assorted nobles perform graceful, sweeping dances that made the women’s great dresses flow everywhere. But it was hard to focus when he felt like he was going to suffocate.

So he went from rubbing his neck to tugging at the collar of his black doublet – which matched his black shirt, black breeches, and black gloves. Or, well, glove. He still wore his huge, spiked gauntlet on his left arm, nervously rubbing the long, metal claws together as he thought again of how Drake commented that it clashed with his gold buttons and accessories, including the weird chain necklace that Fintan had handed to him, seemingly as an afterthought. Confused, Kye had said he wasn’t clashing with anything at all. And then Drake had laughed, patted him on the back, and left to go flirt with some girl. 

And then Magnhild had powdered his nose, and he’d come _this_ close to sneezing all over her. Kye tried to remember if she had even powdered her _own_ nose, and he suddenly realized she hadn’t.

Since then, everyone had left, and he eventually found his way to the great hall full of people dancing and drinking. Now, Kye stood there fidgeting in all his tight, form-fitting clothing – except for the silly breeches. They were tight at the top and the bottom and only reached just above his knees, and they puffed all out around his thighs. He had never worn such a ridiculous thing.

If he dropped his guard for even a second, he’d be all wings and tail and horns and then it would tear up his clothes and probably even do something bad to his hair – which was all pulled behind his neck in a very neat ponytail, for once, instead of some halfhearted attempt at that.

He tugged at his collar again as he glanced around, wondering vaguely if everyone was sweating as badly as he was. Some undeniably pretty girl in a frilly, pink dress was staring at him from the corner – staring so hard he almost thought his tail was sticking out from the bottom of his doublet and waving back and forth again, or else his horns were showing.

She giggled, bit her lip, and used a finger to beckon Kye in a suggestive manner that was largely lost on him, though it still prompted him to blush like an idiot – right before some huge, burly man in a vest came and swept her over to the dance floor. Kye rubbed his claws together again and swallowed. Well, he had probably just come really close to getting his face pounded in by that fine gentleman.

A parting in the sea of people showed him where the wine was, and Kye quietly meandered over to it, snatching up a fancy wine goblet in his right hand. The glove he wore was so silken that it made the silver cup slip right out of his hand, and he had to catch it in his claws. He sighed.

This was going to be a long night.


	5. Dormi Diem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a hero can really take a lot out of you, and being a monster can take even more - but it's worst when you're both. Tom is really feeling that this morning, because why on earth should he get out of bed today, anyway?  
> Too bad all his friends disagree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I know I have to save the land and all, but I reallllly don't wanna get out of bed today."

Traveling was a bitch. He used to love traveling, and now it was borderline impossible with the stress of the whole _what if I eat everyone in the night and don’t even remember it_ thing. Then again, it wasn’t much better when there was a new moon and Tom felt about as energetic as a… well… something _dead._

Then again, no moonlight obviously also meant almost no risk of transforming. Which was great. Perfect, really. But damn if he didn’t want just want to lay in bed.

Not that it was really a _bed_ bed. It was a bed _roll,_ to be exact, and it was in a pretty tiny tent, too. A nice tent, though, made of thick cloth, and the bedroll even had a soft fur for him to lay on, and an almost-as-soft blanket pulled up over his shoulders. Tom sighed and halfway buried his face in his meager pillow.

Alright, so the sun was up. So what? Light was filtering through his little tent already, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him… It definitely was stopping everyone else, though.

Tom groaned.

Some unmistakably heavy footfalls made their way over, and then an unmistakably gruff voice said, “Get up.”

_Good morning, Caid,_ Tom mumbled in his head. In reality, he just grunted something inarticulate.

It apparently was too inarticulate to be something in Caiden’s special grunt-huff-grrmmph language, because he didn’t seem to understand it. Although he did grunt back, so maybe there was hope. Tom just hoped he hadn’t grunted something he didn’t mean to. Like insulted his mother or whatever.

But either way, Caiden moved off, from the sound of it. _Bye, Caid._

Thank Athena…

Tom didn’t get up.

Or maybe _not_ thank Athena just yet, because another set of footsteps approached, these a lot – Tom didn’t want to think _daintier,_ but they were. Lighter, at least.

He had to snicker at his idea that they were dainty when he heard the elf Surandil’s voice address him from just outside the tent. “It is well beyond time to rise, Drake,” he said – all cold and all business, like usual. He and Caiden should be real cuddly by now with their attitudes, Tom thought, and yet somehow they weren’t. “The answers you seek will not wait…”

Bla bla bla _bla_ bla BLA—

Tom moved an arm up to drape it across his face at his nose like a dog that really just wanted to sleep. Was he still talking?

_Bla prophecy bla Moonreaver bla-bla—_

Yeah, he was still talking.

“Surandil,” Tom finally cut in, “I know.”

Silence.

Then Surandil moved off, too. Tom frowned and, for once, thought maybe he was just a little too abrupt. He didn’t want to hurt Surandil’s feelings or anything, but… Wait, who was he kidding? Surandil didn’t have _feelings._

No, seriously, he _didn’t._ So creepy.

So Tom didn’t get up.

After that, Tom had a few moments of stillness. It was like heaven. He relaxed, took a deep breath – which, true, reminded him he really needed to bathe again at some point – and tried to start drifting back to sleep.

A scent he could never miss reached him, waking him up instantly. It wasn’t really a scent anyone ever got used to, least of all him. Not when he’d smelled it before a few years back, filling his entire world and pumping white-hot adrenaline through his veins.

The smell of ash, of brimstone… an unnatural and very _wrong_ smell.

The smell of demon.

But this demon, he knew, was just an innocent cinnamon bun, and Tom opened one eye to see Kye peering into the tent, with all his four horns and bright violet eyes and purple hair. And a concerned look on his face.

“You okay?” Kye asked, quiet and timid, like he didn’t want to disturb the dead. Which Tom was very much _not_ dead, thank you.

The closest Tom came to getting up so far was right then, just so he could get up and pull Kye into a hug for being so fucking adorable and worrying about him. As it was, though, he just let a lazy grin pull at his mouth.

“Yeah, I’m fine, buddy,” Tom replied.

Kye nodded a little. “Okay. Just making sure.”

With that, he was gone, and he let the tent flap fall shut again.

And Tom still didn’t get up.

Since they were playing musical fucking tents… wait, that wasn’t how that game worked— anyway, since they were all visiting him in turns, Magnhild showed up next. This time just a voice outside the tent again, other than Moonlight poking his nose in and sniffing.

“Tom,” she said. “Are you alright? This isn’t like you.”

Something in him wrenched around a little and then promptly melted. She sounded worried, too.

“I’m fine,” Tom said, trying to resist the urge to shrug into his bedroll, because that might disturb the absolutely _perfect_ position he’d achieved. “Tell everybody they can stop worrying, huh?”

No response. If she’d moved off, Tom hadn’t heard it, but Moonlight’s muzzle had disappeared from the entrance, too. He never _could_ hear when Magnhild moved around…

Or when his next guest moved around, either.

Because Sadja’s head poked into the tent next, some of her usual paint smeared on her face and her pointy knife-ears looking like they wanted to cut right through the tent fabric.

“Duckling,” she said promptly, and without the same consideration for his _trying to sleep_ that Kye and Magnhild had shown, “I’m bored.”

_Yeah, lemme get right on that, Sadja… oh wait I don’t want to move._

“Can’t believe you ain’t bored too.”

Okay, that made sense.

“Well, y’know how it’s great to just lay around sometimes?” He lifted his arm over his face enough to peer at her a little more directly. “Want to come try it out with me?”

She pursed her lips at him for half a second like she seriously considered that, but then she said, “Dunno, what if Voros and I are sharing _feelings,_ too? Think he’ll feel me getting off?”

Even Tom nearly choked.

“Uuhh—?”

Sadja shrugged. Then reconsidered and said, “Might be worth it, actually.”

“This just got a couple thousand times weirder.”

“You try having him gulp down your soul and tell me _you_ don’t feel weird,” she complained. Flatly. And then let the tent flap drop again, because shit if she’d been in a _really_ foul mood since they found out about that whole thing.

“Well he eats everything _else…”_ Tom muttered to himself while he put his arm back over his face and sincerely hoped that was his last visitor for the day.

Because he still didn’t get up.

“Hey, kid,” the gravelliest voice in half the realms said while a pair of big feet on a dwarf body stomped to a halt by the entrance flap, and Fintan’s white-bearded face appeared. “The hell’s wrong with you, you sick?”

“I’m _fine,_ Finny,” Tom halfway groaned. “This is just the single most comfortable bedroll in the entire fucking _world_ and I’m going to spend more time on it.”

A pause. Hey, maybe that worked. Then…

“Uh-huh,” Fintan grunted in utter dismissal. “If yer lonely, kid, we’ll stop in the next nearest tavern and you can woo some busty maiden once I’m done with ‘er. Now let’s get movin’.”

But then Fintan left too, and he took with him even the remotest reason for Tom to budge.

So Tom still, despite everything, didn’t get up.

He almost got away with it, too. Just lying there, eyes shut, arm over his face, feeling all that nice warm bedroll and blankets and pillow against his definitely-mostly-naked body… It felt so nice. Not nearly as nice as his ridiculously ritzy bed way back at home in Illikon, but still nice. And nicer than the beds he’d had before he was adopted, too.

It felt nicer than anything he’d felt for a long while, really. Any of the running, the fighting, the fearing for his waning humanity and the safety of the few people who still cared about him—

The tent left.

Not that it was the tent’s fault, but it still _left._ Something – some _one_ – pulled and broke it down. Tom moaned and tightened his arm over his head at the intruding flood of sunlight like he was a vampire instead of a fucking stupid werewolf.

“Look, I just _really_ don’t feel like it right now, okay?” he fussed more than loudly enough to be heard under the muffle of his arm on his face. “You guys… go on without me, I’ll catch up. Do – whatever.”

He really shouldn’t be surprised when he found out who broke down his tent with him still in it, but he still managed to feel an unexpected twinge of annoyance when it was Caiden’s voice that answered.

“No. Move or I’ll carry you.”

Tom still didn’t get up – and Caiden, he had to hand it to him, made good on his threat. Because Tom got halfway to yelping when he felt Caiden throw his blanket off to grab him around the middle and pull him up. Tom growled and squirmed enough for Caiden to drop him – into a heap.

“Fucking hell…” Tom muttered, scrambling to his feet and brushing himself off, as if it made a whole lot of difference. “No rest for the wicked, huh? Or the not-so-wicked…” _What does that mean, anyway?_

Looking around, everybody else was fully prepared. And had eaten, from the dying coals of a fire and the aroma in the air.

Which made Tom sulk more than a little, because he’d missed breakfast.

Kye was already on Ghost’s back, and he trotted the eager horse on over so Ghost could nuzzle impatiently at Tom’s face.

Because absolutely every man, woman, and animal in this camp had to be just so ready to go off and nearly die twenty more times, instead of just taking a break like they deserved once in a while.

But Ghost convinced him.

“Alright, alright,” Tom muttered, drawing the stares of all his companions, as if he hadn’t already. He moved around to Ghost’s side and pulled himself up into the saddle once Kye scooched back enough to make room.

Then he gave his rousing speech to start their day: “Anybody got some leftovers?”


	6. Sun and Sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The entire gang goes on a beach vacation. Trouble is, it takes forever to get to the beach, and Tom still has to coerce people to play volleyball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More modern day AU. Why?  
> Who knows?

First, it’d taken them an hour and a half to get Caiden off the pier, because he just wanted to stay there and fish.

Then, it’d taken them an hour to get Sadja and Kye out of the cheap-ass beach store where they sold absolute shittons of complete tourist garbage. All the stupid little glass figures (Kye got some, of course, because wouldn’t you know the guy collects tiny animal figures), the dumb joke t-shirts (Sadja got Caiden a shirt that said “Reserved Parking” with an arrow pointing straight down, but hey, it wasn’t like he knew that yet, maybe she could slip it on him while he was unconscious and hung over, if she could move him)…

And then they’d eaten out at a seafood buffet. And Caiden basically ate the entire buffet, including those little octopi you eat alive, the kind they claim is a delicacy and no one actually eats the fucking things, because why would you _do_ that?

Now, finally, _finally_ they were on the _actual beach._

And Tom paced around the volleyball net, bouncing the ball between his hands, waiting. He readjusted his shades (he had kickass sunglasses, thanks for noticing) and glanced around at everybody.

Sadja and Kye building an immaculately detailed sandcastle. Surandil stretched out under an umbrella reading _another_ book, because somehow he hadn’t already read all the books in _the entire world_ _._ Magnhild playing fetch with Moonlight, who was gladly bounding into the ocean and bounding right back, his stark silver-white coat glistening in the sun.

Fintan heading off toward the beachside bar. Caiden already _back_ from the beachside bar and planting his muscular ass in his lawn-chair on the beach again, wearing the set of black sunglasses Sadja had put on him – even with the eyepatch, yeah – and he’d left there like he’d done it out of spite.

Or because he’d actually smiled a little when his hands were full holding everybody’s shit they’d bought, because he was the one to do that of course, and she’d just come right up and climbed him like a tree and stuck the things on his face. Uh-huh. Tom was a witness. It’d been almost an entire smile. _Almost._

But… absolutely none of them were playing volleyball.

“Sadja,” Tom said, still tossing the volleyball between his hands. “Bet you can’t beat me.”

Sadja’s pointy-eared head appeared from the middle of the giant sand castle fort, and she narrowed her eyes at him. Kye’s horned _and_ pointy-eared head appeared a moment later, looking confused.

Worked every time.

“You? Just you?” Sadja shot back.

“Nope,” Tom replied with a coy smile. “Me and Kye.”

Kye blinked some more. Tom threw him a look and a quick frown. _Just go with it, Kye._

So Kye asked, “What’s volleyball?”

“I’ll explain the rules as we go, okay? C’mon, everyone else is a stiff. Caid hasn’t even taken his shirt off. Hell, even _Surandil_ is showing his pasty sinews.”

Surandil sat up just enough to give Tom a look. “Ordinarily I would be offended, but your flavorful word choice allows me to forgive you.”

Then he sank right back into his book. Tom shrugged.

So Sadja gave Kye’s tail a tug and then climbed over the walls of their mighty sandcastle. Kye frowned, but he climbed out along with her, and the two of them joined Tom over by the net.

He grinned and spun the ball on one finger. Because hey, he could do that, too. Impressive, right?

“I need a teammate,” Sadja said flatly, looking around at everyone else like Tom did a minute ago. And frowning, because he knew she’d made just the same realization – although, y’know, her eyes lingered on Caiden. Like they always did.

Then Fintan came meandering back, a drink in hand. Tom bit his lip and grinned from ear to ear. From the corner of his eye, he saw Kye give him a look that asked him to please not go there.

“Finny! Want to be Sadja’s teammate?” Tom called.

Fintan paused and pulled his sunglasses down onto his big dwarf nose (because he had those _and_ a broad beach hat; what was Finny without his hats?). He was all grey-white and black chest hair and pudgy muscles. Oh yeah, and he was like, what, three feet tall?

“An’ what would I get to do?” Fintan asked, plucking a long cigar out of his white beard. “Be the ball yer all tossin’ back an’ forth?” He gave a guttural laugh like someone’d just poured rocks down a slope, shoved his shades back up, and kept walking.

They all watched him go. Honestly, though, Fintan was the one who needed a shirt here. Ew.

Silence lingered for a little while longer. Kye frowned and rubbed the back of his neck with his right hand (not like he could ever do it with his left and those crazy claws).

Sadja promptly snatched the ball out of Tom’s hands and threw it right at Caiden’s head.

It bounced off like it’d just hit a boulder and Caiden sat up with a grunt, looking at the bunch of them. Tom grinned innocently, Kye just stood there with his tail flicking like a deer caught in headlights, and Sadja was the only one with the guts to speak when locked under a scowl like Caiden sported.

“Be my teammate, Boros,” Sadja said, picking up the ball and throwing it at his head again, only for Caiden to catch it this time. “And Loki’s knickers, take that bloody shirt off.”

Kye’s eyes went wide under a suddenly furrowed brow. “Loki has knickers?”

“Got knocked up, didn’t he?”

Kye stared some more.

“Mh. Knickers.”

Tom barely stifled a laugh. _Oh gods, I think I love her._

Then Caiden stood up and Tom balled that thought up and ate it. And choked on it, because Caiden pulled his shirt off after that, and holy shit, what god decided he got muscles like that? Or body hair like that?

And Sadja looked like the volleyball was the _last_ thing on her fucking mind. No – wait, not… Shit, word choice.

So while Sadja was busy figuring out (from a distance, probably not like she wanted it to be) all the contours of Caiden’s musculature and very obviously letting her eyes follow that dark line of hair straight down to the front of his swimtrunks – Tom had one too, why didn’t she look at that? Ugh – Kye rubbed his neck some more.

“So um. How does the game work?” Kye asked.

The poor demon was completely oblivious to the way Sadja stared and the way Caiden kept turning his head enough to give Sadja-in-a-bikini more than a few appraising looks. Oh, so _that_ was why Caiden kept the sunglasses… Too bad Sadja always stood on his left and ruined any attempt to cover it up.

“You do better if you’re taller,” Sadja remarked.

“Which is just _one_ reason why you’re about to lose,” Tom clarified sweetly. Sadja flashed him a smile.

Kye’s spearheaded tail waved back and forth just a little faster, only for half a second. “But Caiden’s the tallest one here.”

Tom scoffed. “Oh, pffhhh…”

“He’s bigger than you, too.”

_Oh for the love of—!?_  Tom’s jaw came slightly loose.

“Kye, you’re killing me here, buddy,” Tom growled through his teeth.

Sadja snorted, snickered, and cleared her throat. Caiden didn’t make a sound, but Tom saw a corner of his mouth twitch just a little into his stupid stubble.

Tom swiped the volleyball from Caiden. “Losing team buys the ice cream.”

All Caiden said was, “Deal.”

Things went okay. You know, at first. Sadja was fast like a freak, sure. And Kye was fast, but half the time he had no idea what was going on, and he only had his right arm to work with because his left was eternally covered in spikes up to his elbow.

Tom, of course, wrecked the playing field every chance he got. Were you really imagining something else?

Fine, Caiden and Sadja won. At least, they had the high score by the time the game was done. Despite Caiden sending the ball way too high and Kye having to use his wings just to deflect it (in the most fucking awesome save Tom had ever seen, seriously), Caiden and Sadja had the high score by the time Kye ended up impaling the ball on one of his left-hand claws.

“Oops…” he mumbled, pulling it off and watching it hastily deflate. Tom deflated right along with it.

Sadja declared victory immediately with a loud, “ _H_ _a!”_

“Rematch tomorrow,” Tom shot back. “And now I know your _weaknesses.”_

But he frowned and realized he’d still lost either way. After all, now _he_ had to pay for the entire bucket of ice cream Caiden was going to eat.


	7. Weirdest Smell Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kye liked making camp pretty much anywhere, because the mortal world is such a nice, temperate place. Except this one comes with an abandoned little building and a really, really creepy smell that he thinks needs investigating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill!
> 
> Prompt: Wulfgard, "There's a strange smell behind that door."

Kye didn’t like this.

They’d been wandering for a while now, the whole bunch of them. In woods, through valleys, going Ahriman-knew-where. Kye didn’t really care, though, since he was just glad to still be here with them. That wasn’t what he didn’t like.

Earlier that afternoon, they’d picked an abandoned little building to stay in for the night, out in the middle of nowhere in some woods. Nobody was in it yet, though, because they were all busy doing things outside, trying to relax for a little while, probably.

So that meant Kye was the only one in that little house when he smelled something _really_ weird. He sniffed a few more times, frowning – it seemed like the source was somewhere behind one of the only closed doors in the ramshackle building.

Kye stared at it. The eternal back-and-forth of his spearheaded tail was interrupted by one quick, disturbed jerk.

First, he went to find Tom – he was busy sewing up some clothes he’d torn up the night before, because he was always doing that. Tom’s eyes flicked over to Kye when he approached, and he set his jaw briefly.

“Hi, Kye,” he said casually. “You don’t know much about sewing, right?”

“Um – no…”

“Sweet. So I’ll be the first one to tell you it’s actually pretty manly. I mean, you gotta stitch up your wounds and growl about it somehow, right?”

Kye blinked. What in Hel was he talking about? Not that this was unusual, though. Kye had no idea what he was talking about more than half the time… But that was okay, because it was Tom.

“There’s a, uh,” Kye’s right hand inched up to the back of his neck to start rubbing it nervously. “You know that house we picked out? There’s a really… _weird_ smell coming from behind this door…”

Tom glanced at him and shrugged. “It was empty when we got there. Go check it out, if you want, but I bet it’s nothing.”

Kye’s tail twitched. He _really_ didn’t want to do that.

“Or do you want _me_ to?”

“N-no, no, that’s fine,” Kye blurted. That was silly. He didn’t want to bother Tom with a silly thing.

The smell _did_ bother him, though. It didn’t smell like anything he’d ever smelled, and okay, that happened a lot here in the mortal realm, but still…

Next, Kye found Caiden standing in this big pond in the woods, because he’d waded out there with a fishing pole.

“Hey, um, Caid?”

Caiden grunted a short kind of _Hrm?_ grunt that Sadja said meant he was listening.

Kye went near the pond and stood on a rock at the shore, because he _hated_ water except when it was rain, or an ocean view, or just the nice smell and sound of a murmuring stream or something. He didn’t want to _swim_ in it.

“If there was… like, a weird smell in a building or something, what could that mean? An – an empty building. An old one nobody lives in.”

Caiden threw him a quick look before he returned his attention to the fishing line.

But he then gave one of those tiny shrugs Sadja had told Kye to watch out for, and said, “Old spirit, maybe. Ghosts can make smells.”

Kye felt all the blood drain from his face.

Without glancing at him again, Caiden asked, “Why?”

“No reason at all,” Kye blurted, and then he left.

After that, Kye tried talking to Fintan… but Fintan was asleep and stayed asleep the entire time, so that didn’t do any good. He also saw Surandil meditating at the base of a tree, but that just made him shiver, because Surandil _really_ creeped him out.

Maybe he should just ask Tom to go look, like he’d offered… Kye sighed.

But by the time he’d gotten back to Tom, Magnhild was there and they were talking. Kye wasn’t going to interrupt _that_ …

So that just left… _Um_ … Where was Sadja? Shouldn’t she be with Caiden? Weren’t they like always together or something, because of the soul – tether – eating – bond… something-thing?

Oh no. Oh man. This was not good. Did Caiden know? Surely he’d noticed?

Kye turned in a circle, wings tightening on his back without his permission and his tail flicking wildly. This was _really really bad_. Maybe the angry spirit thing Caiden had mentioned making the smell had taken Sadja.

Turning, he went right back to the little house and the weird-smell-door. Now he stood in front of it, a ramshackle little wooden thing ready to fall to pieces, and he took a deep breath. He wondered what the evil spirit would be like. Would it be like the Shades in the Underworld?

Heavy footsteps came up behind him, big boots that sounded like Caiden’s. They came up and then past him as Caiden came in carrying a line of fish.

And he went right up to the door and opened it to reveal a thrown-together kind of kitchen and Sadja trying to start a fire in the hearth. The weird smells were some of the spices these mortals used to cook their food – their really good food that wasn’t anything at all like the stuff Kye had lived off his entire life.

_Oh._

_Oh. Okay._

Kye rubbed the back of his neck again, tail waving to and fro very, very fast now.

Wow… he felt really stupid.


	8. Precious Moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After inviting over Tom, Kye, Sadja, -and- Caiden, Plexaura decides it'd be a great idea to break out the embarrassing childhood photos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt: Wulfgard Modern AU, Caiden vs Plex, adorable/embarrassing childhood photo sharing

Being invited over to Plexaura’s place was always fun – first of all, she grew up with Caiden as a big brother, so she always had plenty of food ( _good_ food, even if they all knew Caiden would eat anything). Second of all, if Caiden wasn’t around, she’d complain about him sometimes, and he sympathized. No, seriously, he did.

This time, she’d invited not only Tom, but also Kye, who had tailed along after Tom looking like… what did Fintan call him once? Oh yeah, a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockingchairs.

“Kye, relax,” Tom had told him at the time, not that Kye had listened, because he was a bundle of nervous energy no matter what anybody did – except maybe when he was beside a stream…

Things went pretty well. They ate, they talked, Caiden showed up looking as big and scowly as ever, bringing his personal aura of stoic silence… and his little personal Sadja practically hanging off one of his trunky arms.

Sadja gave out hugs. Why? _Probably_ just to annoy Caiden. Oh yeah, and because she liked Tom. A lot. What? She did. And she fawned over Kye like he was an adorable… fawn.

Anyway, Plexaura, being Plexaura, could actually earn herself a little smile or two from deep in the void of Caiden’s complete and total _I never visibly smile, ever_ mood (except those little ghost smiles when Sadja did something and _ugh seriously Caid just grin already_ ), and hey, it was fun to see. So his face muscles worked for more than just scowling.

So what were they doing now? Well… wasn’t anything Tom expected, that was for sure.

They all sat down in the livingroom – Caiden munching on some snacks Plexaura had put out, despite, you know, the fact that they’d _just eaten_ – and Plexaura suddenly presented a pair of photo albums. One was tiny and green, and the other was about three times bigger all around and dark red.

Caiden instantly narrowed his eye and let out this gruff guttural… rumble, or something _._ Kind of a very growly _hrrrm_. It put Sadja on alert, so Tom went ahead and shot Caiden a look, too.

Plexaura, on the other hand, just grinned.

“It won’t hurt, I promise,” she teased, shoving the little green photo album at him. “I know you hate pictures. Especially of your pre-current-self. He hides them away like a grouchy dragon,” she added in Tom and Sadja’s general direction. “It’ll be fun for Kye, too, since I don’t think he even knows what photos are.”

Kye blinked. “Photos?”

“Photographs,” Caiden clarified almost grudgingly and almost through his teeth, but he took the album.

“Pictures,” Plexaura clarified further, sounding very happy about it.

“Embarrassing childhood pictures?” Sadja promptly asked. Tom cleared his throat to mask a snicker, and the only reason he bothered doing that is because Caiden could reach over with a long arm and box his ear if he really wanted to, and it was better safe than sorry when that guy was concerned.

Kind of like when he’d tried to hit on Plexaura—oh yeah, that’d gone _really_ well. Tom’s ears rang remembering it. He shuddered.

Not that it’d stopped him from doing that again before Caiden _got_ here – but anyway…

“How’d you know?” Plexaura asked, throwing her photo album open before anyone could protest.

She opened right to a picture of a very young Caiden eating raw eggs out of a carton – late at night, from the windows. Tom glanced at Caiden long enough to see a blush start collecting in his neck, but it wasn’t even that bad of one. _Disappointing much?_

Then Sadja giggled, and that got some more red in him. Tom grinned.

“He always did this after doing some crazy late-night workout…” Plexaura started.

“So I wouldn’t wake anyone up cooking,” Caiden said flatly.

Plexaura just smiled at him and said sweetly, “You’re so considerate.”

Well _that_ felt like some kind of jab. Especially the way Caiden huffed at her. Not many people could get away with that kind of huff.

Caiden opened his little green book next and set it on the table, revealing a photo of a very little Plexaura, all covered in flour, proudly holding a tray of… _completely_ ashen black cookies that looked like somebody’d cut them from the crust of the Underworld.

Now it was Plexaura’s turn to blush. “But now we know _why_ I always burnt things,” she added defensively. Caiden just offered one of those tiny ghost smiles Tom mentioned earlier.

Next up was another of Plexaura’s – a _super_ skinny baby-faced kid Caiden in swim trunks. At a beach.

The silence that fell from that came heavily, and it pulled that blush in Caiden’s neck all the way up to his face. It was a wonder he wasn’t glowing all the way down to his shoulders in that giant tight-ass (not _ass_ ass, but you get it, right?) T-shirt he was murdering right now, or that he didn’t set the house on fire the way he rumbled and lived up to Sadja calling him ‘furnace.’

Tom practically roared with laughter. Sadja fell into a fit of some mad giggles, Plexaura grinned, and Kye was just so sweet and innocent and didn’t laugh at all.

Silently, Caiden turned the page of his green book to a picture of him and Plexaura bookending a snowman they made, almost as tall as Caiden. It was probably the proudest Tom had ever seen Plexaura, her face all lit up in a giant smile.

And Kye looked like he was going to melt worse than that snowman probably had. Honestly, though? So did everybody else.

You know, especially when Plexaura leaned over to give Caiden a hug.


	9. Not Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kye relives a painful memory of one of his first, and best, experiences in the mortal world - and gets a much-needed reminder from a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt: "First kiss. Any character or couple's perspective you would like, to keep it flexible."

Kye stood alone. Not that that was anything new, really – he usually did.

That’d only changed really recently, after he’d met Tom and the others. Tom, Magnhild, Sadja – even Caiden was nice to him sometimes, or at least he didn’t try to shoot him. And Fintan didn’t treat him any differently for what he was. Surandil… was Surandil.

But he felt alone again. It’d come on suddenly, like it always did. And it always made him remember… It was the remembering that hurt worst.

Feeling alone always took him back to the Underworld, back to Nidavellir, back to memories more painful than most people ever experienced, because they were mortals. Kye didn’t even know how old he was, how long he’d lived alone.

But no, none of that hurt as bad as remembering the first time he thought he _wasn_ _’t_ alone… and how that’d ended up.

_He waited by the stream, like he always did. It was Kye_ _’s favorite place, even of everything in the forest and the village, all the wonderful quaint amazing things mortals did and the places they got to live in. With all the little chirpy squeaky things flying around in the sky, some brightly colored and all flitting with excited energy, happy just to be alive._

_And all the green trees, the smells he didn_ _’t know – earthy. Earth and water, but a_ good _kind, a living kind, not cold layers of rock. A kind that fostered life and let these trees grow, let the flitty singing things fly around, let this wonderful water flow._

_That sound was like nothing else: the bubbling stream. That was his favorite sound, his favorite place. The place where she_ _’d taught him how to skip stones._

_Kye sat there, tail wanting to flick nervously even though it wasn_ _’t there right now – no, he was disguised, because he had to be. He always had to hide the truth. But he couldn’t blame anybody for that, and even if he hide it forever on, he’d do it for her._

_Rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, he twirled the little flower he held between the long, metal-clawed fingers of his left gauntlet. He had to be careful or he_ _’d destroy it, it was so delicate. The mortal world made things really fragile… but really beautiful._

_Then she sat right beside him._

_Kye nearly started out of his skin and nearly dropped his disguise, it scared him so bad, but he should be used to it by now. Febriel was an elf – the_ good _kind, not the bad kind, like in Nidavellir – and she had a way of sneaking up on people._

_“Hi,” he said, a nervous smile appearing on his face even though he’d tried to keep it off._

_Febriel smiled back, and something in him rocketed up from his stomach to his heart and then straight up to his throat, making his face and his neck and pretty much everything really warm. He had no idea how she did that to him._

_“Hi,” she replied, taking a seat by his side. Her blue eyes flicked to the little flower he held._

_That prompted Kye to hold it out to her with a shaking hand, that nervous smile blossoming into a stupid, anxious grin. And that only made Febriel smile more as she took it and gave it a careful sniff._

_They talked for a little while, always about nice things. Febriel named trees and flowers and birds – those were the flitty singing things – for him. The names were weird, but he_ _’d remember them._

_Then she told him about clouds. They talked about water. And it didn_ _’t feel weird – it never did, not with her. He could talk to her about anything. Even though it wasn’t weird, it made him nervous. Way more nervous than he’d ever been – a different kind of nervous. Not scared for his life, not scared he’d be tortured or have his soul clawed or have his body seared or branded or whipped, none of that normal stuff. A really strange kind of nervous like he’d never felt._

_How did mortals ever manage to do this? And how did it work? He_ _’d heard succubi talk about stuff like this, but that was nowhere near the same…_

_So he just –_ did _it. He couldn_ _’t believe he had until he’d already done it. Kye scooted just a little closer to her, and he brought his right hand up and gently touched her cheek. Then her chin. He turned his face toward her with just a brush of his skin. She knew what she was doing, he guessed, but she still froze and looked at him, locking eyes as he leaned in ever closer._

_Leaned in closer until his lips brushed hers, his hand crept over behind her cheek and stayed there until he kissed her—_

Kye pinched his eyes shut. He tried to push the memory away – he didn’t want to remember the rest. It hurt. It hurt him like no torture ever had, and he’d thought he felt every torture every realm had to offer.

Febriel had meant everything to him… Then she found out the truth, the truth nobody could know. The truth all over him now, the horns on his head and the fangs in his mouth and the tail waving back and forth behind him and all the rest of it.

And now here he was, alone.

Boots crunched behind him, and a strong hand landed on his right shoulder, the one not covered by a spiked pauldron. Kye turned his head to see Tom standing there, wearing a weary smile – a weary, encouraging smile.

Tom didn’t say a word. Kye had learned that about mortals, too, and not just ones like Caiden who seemed to have some kind of special powers. It happened between friends, and it especially seemed to happen between siblings – or the siblings you should’ve had, like the one whose green-and-gold eyes watched him now.

Sometimes mortals just… _knew_ things. And sometimes that was all it took for others to just know things, too. Like right now.

Because, no matter what he thought now and then when the demons of Sorrow came to wail at him from so long a distance, Kye had needed the reminder to know the most important thing.

He wasn’t alone anymore.


	10. No Words Necessary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get a bit insulting when Tom and Sadja bicker over who lost the key to the inn room - so Caiden lets them work out their differences, because neither of them realize he's got that key in his pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt: "Wait a moment, I thought you had it!?"  
> (This one was so fun to write, thank you so much! <3)

They made it to the inn room. Didn’t get any farther, not after Tom started patting himself down looking for the key and then turned an almost accusing glare to Sadja, who lingered near Tom’s side like she planned to pickpocket him. Not that Caiden would put that beyond her.

“Don’t look at _me_ ,” Sadja said flatly. Reading Tom’s eyes, apparently. Since he was easy to read, and she couldn’t actually sense all that frustration and confusion Tom put out like an angry fire with nowhere to spread.

“Why not?” Tom almost snapped. “Where’s the friggen key?”

“ _You_ have it, unless you lost it in some other girl’s pocket.”

Caiden silently furrowed his brow at their tones. They were both angry, he didn’t have to feel what he felt to know that. Probably they still held grudges because of arguments before. Something that’d happened last night, something Tom had tried to smooth over and couldn’t. Now they used the chance to take jabs like a pair of unruly kids. All of it made Caiden fold his arms and watch from the far end of the hall.

“No, _you_ have it,” Tom retorted. “Unless you fed it to Caiden along with everything else.”

Caiden rolled his eye for all of half a second. Neither of them noticed, since they were too busy trying to stare each other down. Which, if it hadn't been Sadja, Tom probably would’ve been able to do without much trouble.

“You sure _you_ didn’t eat it? Maybe you dropped it in your barmy little jerky pouch you feed your wolf with?”

“Feed my _what!?_ That’s just – I’m not – like you’re one to talk—give me a break!”

“I’m the one who has to keep track of all the food, and if there’s a scrap of meat leftover after Voros is done, it up and _disappears_ because _you_ got your paws on it—”

“What shit in _your_ little bucket of war paint?”

They kept on like that. On and on. Caiden shifted just enough for his tight leather jerkin to rub against the wall, and even that much got Sadja’s attention. Her head whipped in his direction like she wanted something else to attack.

“And _you_ stop being so smug, what the hell are you up to besides holding up the wall, Voros?” Sadja snapped in a hurry.

Caiden just gave her a look and grunted in mild confusion. Until he realized…

_Right._ The connection. It worked both ways, or at least sometimes it seemed to. Hell if he knew.

Not that Tom cared. “He’s probably waiting for _you_ to admit you lost the stupid key.”

“Still on about it, just ‘cause _you_ can’t admit _you_ —?”

“Hey, look, I _do_ admit that kind of crap. I _admitted_ it. Didn’t I _say_ I was sorry, or did you not even hear me yesterday?”

Sadja went quiet then. Finally, there it was. The reason they’d been arguing, and now their anger and frustration steadily started to melt to something more like guilt and too much sheepishness.

“I don’t say anything without meaning it,” Tom finally muttered. And the mutual guilt grew steadily worse, turned to both of them setting their eyes hard on the floor and not saying another word. Given it was the two of them, if they weren’t talking, they’d made each other feel pretty damn awful.

Breathing a short sigh, Caiden approached them and fished the key out of his pocket. Without a word, he dangled it right over their noses.

Both of them looked equally as mortified. At the same time, they stared at it, then glanced at each other, then glared at _him_.

They looked like a pair of dogs that’d each been caught chewing on shoes. And they deserved it, with all that dumbass bickering.

Tom growled something aggressive and incomprehensible as he snatched the key and turned to unlock the room.

Sadja, on the other hand, muttered lamely, “You… big… cheeky – _arse_.”

So Caiden allowed himself a laugh. Just a short chuckle or two, more like a pair of low rumbles that barely raised his shoulders, but it was still enough for both Tom and Sadja to turn, stare at him, and then suddenly seem to decide, mutually, that they were even more embarrassed than before.


	11. Black and White and Read all Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wulfgard farm AU! Time for a heatwave and the Sunday paper, but how do you divide one paper between this many people?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt is simply, "How does the Wulfgard crew divide up the newspaper?"  
> I loved writing this so much. I put it in a little silly Stardew Valley style farm AU for the Wulfgard characters that I occasionally write on the side.

It was hot. It was middle of the summer, middle of the day, _guess what we can’t afford air conditioning_ hot. Seriously, it was _really, REALLY_ fucking hot. And you knew it was hot because nobody wanted to move, and almost everybody here loved moving in general.

Magnhild had the bright idea to plug in the only fan they had in the entire farmhouse and now it was positioned just right so everyone could flop in the floor or in a chair and bask in the single exhausted fan’s utmost radiance.

Or, to put it bluntly, the ridiculously inefficient little tiny puff of air it was moving across the room. Still, that was better than nothing when the air refused to move otherwise and it just sat there, sticky with humidity and stifling enough to make it feel hard to breathe.

“Time for the Sunday paper, you guys,” Tom pointed out halfheartedly, but he certainly didn’t move from the one chair he’d managed to claim. The second biggest one, and he was pretty proud he’d managed to get even this much space to sprawl out on.

Because Magnhild was happy in the floor with her wolfdog, Moonlight; Surandil sat down there on a little cushion; and Fintan had a tiny chair to himself. Then there was the sofa, but Caiden took that entire thing up of course and Sadja was laying around on the floor in front of it occasionally trying to bother him.

Oh yeah, and there was Kye. Who was… where the hell _was_ Kye, anyway?

“Uh-huh,” Fintan grunted. “Who’s gonna go get it?”

“Not I,” Surandil murmured.

“Don’t care about it,” Magnhild said simply from the floor, scratching a whining, panting Moonlight on the head.

“Voros will get it,” Sadja lazily volunteered for him.

_Grunt._ Tom wasn’t well-versed in Caiden’s language, but he was pretty damn sure that sound meant a solid _No._

Tom snorted. “Oh well, too bad.” Because _he_ sure as hell wasn’t going to go get it.

“Make Moonlight go fetch it,” Fintan grumbled.

Moonlight perked his head up, looking positively outraged – he stood, but Magnhild got an arm around his neck and wrestled him back down, snickering knowingly and whispering something to him about not ruining it for everyone else, because the two of them always did have these conversations nobody else heard or grasped at all.

“Hey, guys!” Kye called from the doorway, waving the paper around. But he stopped, blinking, while he stood there all shirtless (because he’d finally gotten used to showing all his scars and tattoos), in shorts and looking completely and perfectly comfortable in the _dear gods do something it’s too hot_ heat everywhere. “Hey, is everyone okay?”

Fine, so sometimes Tom forgot Kye was an actual demon from the Underworld. This kind of weather was probably fucking balmy.

Tom gave Kye a thumbs-up, and from the corner of his eye, he saw Kye shrug and meander on inside, tail waving around behind him.

“Okay, well, here it is,” Kye said, with absolutely no interest – because he’d already taken out the little travel section and had his nose poked into it, and he had the home decorating section to go with it.

Seeing the travel section, though, made the supposedly uninterested Magnhild – which of course also meant Moonlight – get up and pad along after Kye to read it while peering past his arm. Tom frowned and felt just a little sore, but – hey, paper.

He rolled out of his chair (literally) and caught himself before he landed in a sweaty heap in the floor. Everybody else was already getting their paws all over it.

Fintan pointedly cleared his throat when Sadja nearly reached it first, and that gave him enough time to snatch it up instead. “Let yer elders go first, kiddos,” he said with a huff while he got busy extracting all the local news and everything to do with business and money.

“Only because they like the _boring_ sections,” Tom replied sweetly. Sadja giggled, and Fintan grumbled and muttered and tossed the rest of the paper on the floor again like the grouchy old dwarf he was.

But by the time he’d done that, Caiden and Surandil were there too, and of course Caiden snatched it up next and expertly fished out all the boring shit _he_ liked – weather (because someone had to actually be responsible for the crops, but Tom was fine not being that person), sports (Tom was stealing that later), international news, and the… Wait a second.

Caiden held out what was left and Tom grabbed it from him, opening it and scratching through a few pages.

Sadja was busy looking over the crook of his arm. “Did he nick the TV guide again?”

“Caaaiiid!?” Tom fussed—but Sadja tried to yank the comics section out, and no way she was doing that.

Tom practically crumpled the whole thing trying to keep a grip, extra pages falling everywhere. He growled and sputtered and Sadja just held on tighter and stuck her tongue out at him, still pulling.

So of course it ripped, and there went the comics section, torn neatly in half, and both of them fell flat on their asses on the floor. From where he was taking up the entire sofa again, Caiden snorted a short excuse for a quiet laugh or two.

Surandil hardly noticed any of it, since he calmly removed some of the only sections left: style and fashion, arts and culture, and… obituaries. Tom was just about to ask _why the f—_

“You may have your favorite sections, Drake,” Surandil said before Tom could speak a word. “I do not believe anyone else desires them,” he added pointedly, dropping a few papers in Tom’s lap.

Oh yeah, the naughty sections. _Heheh—_

“Hey, they aren’t _that_ bad!” Tom almost snapped, only just now realizing just how judgmental Surandil had sounded.

Then he looked at the torn-up, sad first half of a bunch of comics in one hand. Sadja was looking at hers, too, but it was upside-down.

“I dunno how to read this,” she said very simply and without the tiniest iota of shame. And she made her way back over to Tom and sat down beside him, scraps in hand. Tom took them and got them back into position to hold the two halves together while Sadja leaned near his shoulder.

Yeah, he always ended up reading the comics out loud to her. And yeah, they usually tore them in half first, because they always fought over them. Why? Who the hell knew?

About halfway through, Sadja snatched for what was left of the rest of the newspaper and said, “Anybody take the cooking stuff?”

And _that_ was the section she got Caiden to read to her. Tom snickered.

Then he went back to reading the rest of the comics for Sadja and definitely getting absolutely no help from her illiteracy while they tried to do crosswords together.


	12. DRAGONS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caiden and Tom stumble upon what might be a dragon's lair, and Caiden is suddenly stuck listening to Tom tell him just how amazing dragons are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt fill for the OCtober event on r/fanfiction. Prompt was:
> 
> Fandom  
> > We all have something we're passionate about. Something we could stand to talk about for hours. What's that one thing your character adores that they'll buy merchandise for, talk their friends' ears off over, or even write fan fiction about?
> 
> And now we get to see for sure just how hopelessly Tom will fanboy over dragons.

Caiden squinted deeper into the cave, the mouth of it taller than most castles he’d seen. Given where they were and what they were looking for, this was either the entrance to a jotunn’s lair inside a mountain or something even worse.

“Is this a _dragon_ _’s_ cave?” Tom blurted over Caiden’s shoulder, staring past him, electrical excitement coming off him in waves to the point of almost turning contagious.

_Almost_.

Tom would’ve walked right in, too, if Caiden hadn’t put an arm out in front of him and stopped in him in his tracks – and prompted Tom to give him a pleading look like he was being denied his life’s dream. Which, from the emotions coming off him, maybe he was.

“Maybe,” Caiden replied. Trying to pointedly inject into his tone the possibility that it could’ve been and that meant that walking inside ended in one thing: death.

Tom didn’t care at all. He just grinned and his eyes lit up. If he had a tail right now, it would’ve been wagging insanely. Caiden pinched the bridge of his nose with his free hand.

“Well let’s go check it out, huh?” Tom said, shoving Caiden’s arm down. Not that it did him much good, since Caiden took one long stride forward and got a hold on Tom’s shoulder instead, tugging him around to face the mouth of the cave again and all but shoving him back out.

Tom sputtered and huffed and growled. “Y’know, Sadja’s right? You are _such_ a fucking spoilsport.”

“If it _is_ a dragon, Tom, it’ll kill us both. We’d be walking into its lair. It’ll have its hoard there, and maybe eggs, too.”

“Now those are some eggs you _wouldn_ _’t_ get to eat, Caid.”

Caiden threw him a scowl. Sometimes he wondered how he put up with all the mouth he got, between Tom and Sadja. The weirdest part, though, was that Tom wasn’t even mad.

No, all that came off him was more of that absolutely burning excitement that seemed to light up the air around him, like his soul was growing too big for his body from the sheer possibility of the involvement of dragons.

It was preposterous.

Tom tried to turn around, so Caiden put a hand on his shoulder and kept it there, holding on and directing him back down the impossibly sheer, rocky passes of the Jagged Edge mountains.

“I wonder what kind of dragon it is. You know nobody really knows jack shit about these things? How they work, how much magic they can really use? I mean it’s obviously a _lot_ of magic, they’re completely _amazing_ — Hey, think it’s a red one? If it’s a red one, we’re _so_ going back. I mean I’m still gonna go back if it’s blue or black or green or whatever, but if it’s _red_ …”

Caiden huffed.

“Speaking of eggs, though, you know how they lay those? It’s _awesome_ – they can actually _fly between worlds._ _”_ He pointed up at the darkening twilight sky, the light fading well beyond the horizon, clouds becoming deep purple streaks. Giving a brief glance, Caiden saw Tom pointed at a particularly orange-red star.

“All those stars and stuff out there, the ones people have speculated are like, Muspelheim and all the other realms, or planes, or whatever you want to call them?”

Caiden grunted.

“Some people think they’re all just hanging there attached to Yggdrasil – that’s the world tree, you probably knew that already – and the dragons, they just pick a point and fucking _fly there_ because they can _do that_. And supposedly they go back to their home realm to find a mate, because the dragons are usually _there_ instead of _here,_ and then they come back to the mortal realm to lay their eggs and raise young because it’s so much safer here than all those other realms made of – of _fire_ and _ice_ and…”

Caiden quirked a brow. Fine, he hadn’t known that.

A giant grin appeared on Tom’s face and he gave Caiden a stare that made him instantly slant his brows back down into their usual scowl.

“See?” Tom said, patting the arm Caiden still kept behind him to push him along. “You learned something, Caid. Told you I know a lot of shit.”

“Right,” Caiden replied. “Yeah, I learned something. But I’ve never cared much about dragon mating patterns.”

“Ha, ha. Great, I _broke_ you, I made you be a smartass—”

It was a red dragon.

An enormous, winged shape – bigger than anything _alive_ that Caiden had ever seen – blotted out what little light remained in the passing day. Its scales caught the starlight, shimmering hues of blood and crimson red. Before it stretched a long neck, head bearing horns, and its long body tapered into a pointed, spiked tail. It kept all four of its legs tucked close underneath it to fly toward its lair all the faster.

In one motion, Tom reached back and knocked Caiden’s hand off his shoulder so hard and so abruptly that even Caiden almost staggered. And Tom turned on his heel and took off back up the excuse for a path they’d made down the mountainside.

“Dammit, Tom—” Caiden growled, whirling and charging off to run him down before he did something irreparably stupid.


	13. Definitely Some Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom flirts with everybody. This includes Plexauara, Caiden's little sister. ... Yeah, bad idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A prompt fill for the OCtober event on r/fanfiction. Prompt was an image prompt of, essentially, a guy jumping into the water to get away from a bull (that was chasing him into said water).  
> So... whoops!

All things considered, it might’ve been the stupidest thing Tom ever did. Okay, no, maybe not _the_ stupidest, but it was definitely one of them, alright?

Because he’d gotten the bright idea to drop by Plexaura’s place – Plexaura Voros, Caiden’s little sister. When he got there, it’d turned out she was being her usual self and needing help with some stuff but not asking anybody. That seemed to be a pattern with her, probably because she was just about as stubborn as her brother.

So what? He helped move some furniture around, okay? It wasn’t a big deal.

Sharing a couple drinks with her afterward wasn’t a big deal, either.

Neither was hanging out at her house and flirting with her the entire time. And getting her to blush, and she was honestly _really_ pretty…

No, none of it was a bad idea until that evening.

Tom had just opened a window and sat there with his elbows on the sill, staring out across the little countryside Plexaura had just moved into. Which was really pretty, all open, rolling plains of green grasses shimmering in the twilight almost like the sea back in Illikon.

Plexaura had gone upstairs for _something something,_ he didn’t remember right now, and his mind wandering back to his home he missed so much distracted him just enough to not notice the heavy boots approaching the door behind him until that door was already open.

Glancing over his shoulder, Tom saw an immense shadow there occupying way too much space for one person and absolutely owning it because there was no way he would get past him. And that shadow had one eye, shoulders at least as wide as the entire doorframe, and all the muscle anybody could hope for on somebody like that.

That meant _a lot._ And every single one of those muscles was bunched up like a bull ready to charge. It didn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to see long horns on his head and his breath rolling out in front of his face in a puff of hot, angry steam.

“Hi, Caid,” Tom said, his voice cracking just a little. He put on an absolutely mortified attempt at an innocent smile and it really didn’t turn out.

All he got in answer was some increasingly loud rumbling like the growling of a fucking volcano. Oh yeah, and that blue eye barely holding back a storm narrowed at him a touch or two, starting to twitch.

_You’re fucked,_ that amazingly helpful voice in Tom’s head told him.

“Look – hey, it’s not what you think, okay? We didn’t _do_ anything, and it’s not even night yet, she wasn’t in any danger—and it’s a new moon, remember? Everything’s fine.”

Caiden looked very much like he didn’t give a shit.

Tom didn’t run from things very often. It wasn’t really his style.

But Caiden’s shoulders twitched and the second they did, Tom turned and he leapt out the fucking window and started to run across all that pretty grass he’d been admiring a second ago, which wasn’t quite so pretty when it was scratching against his bare chest (yes, he was shirtless, _details_ ) and he _wasn’t_ in the mood for it.

Of course, he wasn’t in the mood for much anything after Caiden jumped right out the window after him, looking absolutely determined to eat him alive.


	14. Girls' Night Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A night out on the town for the ladies. Magnhild isn't big on all this city mess, but Sadja and Elektra all but insisted - and they invited a few more friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill! Prompt:  
> "Girl's night out." Your female Wulfgard cast, or some of them, none of the guys. Bonding time!

Tonight certainly promised to be interesting.

Who had arranged this, Magnhild wasn’t sure. Maybe it was Sadja, or maybe Elektra, or probably both. They did seem to love coming up with… Things. Many different things. It wasn’t always easy to know what to call them. ‘Ideas,’ but they weren’t always thought through enough to even be considered that.

Now she stood with Sadja, all but towering over the little wood elf buzzing around her like an excitable honeybee and looking in the general direction of the odd shops in the city. Because they were in a city. Magnhild didn’t much care for cities. Traveling in a group made her have to get used to them, but they took far too much getting used to.

She’d even left Moonlight with Tom for all this. No, cities didn’t suit her at all.

_ “It’ll be fun,” _ Sadja had assured her while they were busy getting ready for a night on the town. They did this by painting each other. War paint. Which maybe the cityfolk wouldn’t appreciate, but neither of them cared in the slightest.

Now Magnhild wore Sadja’s black paints streaked here and there and strung in intricate designs across her skin, and Sadja wore Magnhild’s deep, forest green, particularly the “hunter’s eyes” stripe across both her eyes and the bridge of her nose.

Elektra was the first to show up, two others trailing along behind her. They seemed to be fussing and fretting. But Elektra wasn’t – she sauntered over with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye that told of mischief. More plans with Sadja, Magnhild felt sure of it. Like usual, Elektra wore one of the most risque outfits Magnhild had ever seen. But unlike Sadja’s general state of undress in part for the hell of it, Elektra’s was very,  _ very  _ much on purpose.

“Good evening, loves,” she said, glancing between the two of them and quirking a long eyebrow. “The elves  _ do  _ make very…  _ different _ sort of makeup, don’t they?”

“Camouflage,” Magnhild replied.

“This is us being fancy,” Sadja added.

Elektra chuckled. “You’re both coming with me to the next royal ball, I don’t care if I have to smuggle you in.”

Magnhild tilted her head. “You’d  _ want  _ us there?”

“Oh naturally, you’d disrupt the whole thing. I’d love to see everyone get their knickers in a knot.”

Sadja put in, “Could empty their pockets while they’re distracted.”

More planning. Magnhild folded her arms.

Severina and Carlisa showed up then, and Carlisa said, “We’re here to have  _ fun _ , not rob someone’s subjects blind.”

“Robbing is fun…” Sadja started.

Magnhild was a little occupied looking at the two Illikonians: Severina Kallistos, a knight, and all dressed appropriately for the role, wearing fancy armor that shimmered in the starlight. And then there was Carlisa – Queen Carlisa Illikoni. She was wearing a causal noble’s outfit, not at all fancy enough to be a queen.

“You really should have a guard,” Severina interjected. From the look on Carlisa’s face, it was at least the third time she’d done that.

“I do have a guard; I have  _ you _ ,” Carlisa replied, patting Severina’s arm. Severina tensed just at the touch, going all wide-eyed, like she’d been graced with a blessing from a goddess.

Magnhild scoffed all too apparently.  _ Imperials and their royals… _

That earned her a snicker from Sadja and a light elbow in the side from Elektra.

“Manners,” Elektra whispered sweetly, sounding deeply amused and not entirely sincere. If anything, she wanted to egg her on.

Then the straggler showed up. She came running up from the dark like a crimson-haired shadow – it didn’t help that she wore black  _ and  _ all her exposed bare skin was ringed and lined in sharp, runic tattoos of black. She was a Channeler from the Imperial Inquisition. Plexaura Voros. Magnhild had never gotten to get to know her.

Sadja had. Because the instant Plexaura appeared, they both broke into bright grins and started chattering. Magnhild could barely keep up with it.

But once they’d died down, Carlisa rubbed her hands together eagerly and asked, “Shall we get started, then? Where shall we go first?”

“ _ Petstore _ ,” Sadja blurted so fast it was almost incomprehensible.

“The blacksmith,” Severina said.

“Library,” Plexaura added.

“Spa, of course,” Elektra put in.

“Royal gardens,” Magnhild said.

Carlisa blinked. Everyone exchanged looks.

“Bloody hell,” Elektra declared with feeling.

“ _ I _ ,” said Carlisa quite firmly, “was thinking the tavern for starters. The night is young yet.”

That, at least, was something everyone agreed upon, Magnhild included. So they set off almost in a formation down the lamplit street, everyone talking at once. But it was Severina’s remark that pricked up Magnhild’s ears.

“Shouldn’t the tavern come last?” Severina asked almost suspiciously.

“This is why Carlisa is my favorite queen,” Elektra said, throwing Severina a coy smile. That made her fume a bit, setting her jaw.

“Could you not say that so  _ loudly? _ ”

“Oi! Queen coming through over here!” Sadja shouted into the night, drawing more than a few looks. Most every one of those looks thought Sadja was surely insane. But Severina looked ready to draw her sword – and everyone else laughed.

“Really, darling, you need to relax,” Elektra said, plucking a flower off a sill in passing and sliding it into Severina’s hair. “You’ll give yourself a headache, and we haven’t even had wine yet.”

Severina promptly pulled that flower out with an annoyed huff, but before she could toss it, Magnhild rescued it from her angry fingers and put it in her own hair instead. It was a beautiful shade of pink. It’d be a shame to let it go to waste after already being plucked.

They did eventually get to the tavern, ordered various drinks – Magnhild quickly learned the nobles liked their wines; while she, Sadja, and Plexaura settled for a good ale… Except Carlisa, the odd one out. She preferred ale as well.

“A toast,” Carlisa proposed, standing over the table and raising her tankard, “to good friends! And to stressed bodyguards,” she added, giving Severina a gentle smile.

Severina sighed, but managed something of a smile in return.

“Hear hear,” Elektra said, and everyone stood to clink their various glasses and tankards together.

It didn’t take long after that before Sadja and Elektra took turns betting on who could seduce half the tavern. And that didn’t take long to turn into a tavern brawl. And _that_ , in turn, didn’t take terribly long for them to win.

Particularly after someone landed a good hit on Plexaura, who always did seem to hold herself back, for some reason or another; Magnhild had no idea why. The offender was nearly beaten within an inch of his life by the whole lot of them. Even Carlisa, all nobility thrown to the wind, got in more than a few punches. Severina, of course, said she was only acting on orders.

By the time they were all carrying their various bruises and scrapes with them to the spa, Magnhild had almost decided that, given the right people, maybe a city wasn’t so terrible after all.


	15. So Cold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deep in the Underworld, Kye gets to experience a boat ride and something like water for the first time... He doesn't much like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt: "The first boat ride..."

Everything was so cold.

The air was cold. The water _looked_ cold, and it smelled cold. The wind was freezing. The black rocks and tiny crags of ice randomly interspersed in them were obviously cold to the touch.

Shanara was cold, too. Then again, she always was.

The half-Erinyes stepped onto the narrow little boat carved from bone and turned, ice-blue eyes on him as he stood there looking and feeling apprehensive about every single bit of this. Not only was he used to the heat of the Fields of Agony, but this liquid wasn’t like anything he’d ever been around.

“Kye,” said Shanara, her voice frigid too, “get in.”

Behind him, Kye’s tail jerked a few times out of its gentle, rhythmic back-and-forth. He glanced at the bone-boat and then at the gently flowing liquid it floated in, and he put on a fanged grimace.

“I – I dunno, Shan, it’s kinda…”

“ _Kye_.”

“Okay,” he blurted promptly and stepped on up and put one foot in the horrible unstable wobbling _thing_ floating in the – _on_ the – _stuff._

It tried to throw him and her right over and onto the riverbank of black and grey stone and sand. Shanara spread her great, black-feathered wings and put a foot and the head of her heavy flanged mace on the opposite side of the boat, steadying it.

“Easy,” she said, slowly raising a dark brow at him. But she wasn’t really mad, because Shanara never got mad, not openly anyway. She kind of never got… anything, except sometimes she’d look at people funny.

She was looking at _him_ a little funny right now.

“Sorry,” Kye mumbled as he got in and sat down on a bone-bench in the bone-boat and he really didn’t like it.

He also didn’t like whatever they were floating on. The bone boat didn’t seem to mind how weird it was, gliding right over the glistening silvery surface, cutting through it and making weird ripples. Leaning over, Kye reached his bare left fingers down toward that freaky shimmery liquid—

“ _Don_ _’t_ ,” Shanara almost snapped, “touch it.”

Kye froze. “What _is_ it?”

She snorted. “It’s very similar to what mortals would call water, but not quite.”

He paused and blinked his violet eyes at it. “What’s water?”

Shanara sighed. “Try reading more often, Kye. Or talk to demons who’ve been to the mortal realm.”

“I mean, I’ve done that stuff, but I’ve never _seen_ it. It’s like blood that’s clear and isn’t so sticky and gross and hot, right?”

“That… is a sufficient description, I suppose? Coming from you, at least.”

“So why is this not water?”

“Nothing here is quite like it is in Midgard, that’s why, or at least not most of it. Not that it makes any difference to us, even with human blood.” She stood at the back of the boat still, all tall and proud, directing them down the wide cold river with a long oar – also made of bone.

“So what’s wrong with it?”

“Firstly, it’s full of souls. Lost ones that ended up in there, dragging creatures in when they can. That, and the water is much colder than ordinary water ever could be without turning to ice.”

Kye stared at it dumbly. And he grunted, “Oh.”

The boat ride was creepy, with everything being so cold – so cold that he shivered. So cold that he wanted to curl up, but he had nothing to look at except the vast fields of cold stone and jagged mountains jutting from the plains of still more nothing, full of creatures horrible and hungry and all so cold, themselves.

Instead, he looked down at the not-water and thought about how it seemed a lot like what he’d always heard water was supposed to be. Not like the blood he had to drink whenever he got thirsty, had to bathe in whenever he got filthy. This was weird, but it was much less disgusting. Kye had always felt like the blood was wrong, but he’d never known anything else.

So he extended another finger toward that wavering, glassy surface…

And something reached up to extend a finger back.

A whole hand, actually, and one made of bone or something like it – he had no idea – and it snatched his wrist in a grip so tight it made his hand feel ready to pop off.

The thing tugged, Kye yelped – and he heard Shanara throw down the oar and lunge.

Frigid not-water filled his nose, his mouth, his ears – it swallowed him, chilling through his skin, to the bone, and freezing his blood, frosting his eyes over until he couldn’t see. Still the thing pulled, even while something grabbed him around the waist and started pulling back.

Kye flapped his enormous bat-like demon wings and screamed into the river.

But then, the thing let go.

All at once, Shanara hauled him from the choking liquid and he sprawled back into the boat, shivering violently, sputtering, coughing up water – not-water – and whimpering.

Shanara knelt alongside him and quickly looked him over, lifted his arm and checked his wrist, checked his shoulders, brow furrowed hard, focused…

Once her hard-edged expression softened only a touch, she said, utterly calm and factual, “Kye, it’s no wonder all the other demons treat you like you’re useless.”

Kye shivered worse, tucked his wings in around himself and curled his tail in. “S-s-sorry,” he offered through chattering teeth.

Shanara went back to rowing. Kye kept laying there, staring only at the bottom of the boat now.

“I don’t think I like water,” he suddenly said.

“This isn’t mortals’ water,” Shanara reminded flatly.

Kye rubbed his arms, still shivering. “Okay.”

Shanara kept rowing.

And Kye abruptly decided aloud, “But I don’t think I like _boats_ , either.”


	16. Brush with Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Practice with proper 100-word drabbles! You'll see a small series of these. I'm using the prompts as the titles, because why not.

The gauntlets came last. Pulling them on, readjusting them, standing before that worn-out mirror casting his worn-out reflection back at him, his head and shoulders barely fitting in the frame. He tilted it, staring at where his left eye should be.

Reaching up, he pulled the eye patch off and looked into that glaring emptiness. The only thing to fill it was the angry, deep red glow of that rune in the back of his skull.

“Voros?”

The door creaked open behind him. Sadja peeked in, tilting her head.

He grunted. Put the eyepatch back on.

“I’m fine.”


	17. Shelter

Nothing here but fucking _snow_ and _cold_.

Nowhere to make camp, but there was Voros, kicking snow around and making a place for a bedroll, in the middle of nothing.

“You’ll freeze your balls off, and I’m not sure who’ll be sadder,” she prompted, hugging herself and shivering because _Freyja_ _’s frilly knickers it was cold_.

Voros threw her one of _those_ looks, all hard edges and _shut up_ and _grunt,_ before he pulled her over and really just dragged her down into that bedroll. Which was _really_ warm and cozy.

Wasn’t like you needed shelter when you had a Voros.


	18. Out of the Dark

Everything hurt. Spun, too, until up was down, down was sideways, and the floor came rushing up real fast. Sounds faded out – and vision and feeling, all except the tingling, twitching, _wrong_ pain, because this wasn’t supposed to be able to happen, was it?

That kept up for a while, until she was surely gone.

Then a heavy, warm touch replaced the nothingness, on a shoulder she forgot she had.

“Sadja,” said a voice, the only one that’d come to matter (gods damn him), while he gathered her in his arms, here just to pull her out of the dark.


	19. Festive

She stood on a precarious stack of boxes, hanging some mistletoe. In the bedroom, as if it’d be asking for anything unusual.

Caiden snorted.

Sadja started. He wasn’t supposed to be here right now. The boxes toppled under her feet, but Caiden only had to clear one long stride to catch her.

“Oh.” She promptly put her arms around his neck. “Here I’d hoped you’d walk in naked with a red bow over your bits.”

He rolled his eye.

Her eyebrows wagged. “It’d have to be a _big_ bow.”

Caiden didn’t dignify that with an answer, unless the kiss counted.


	20. A Different Sort of Festive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another drabble prompt fill of "festive."  
> I don't know what AU this is for Tom to say "merry Christmas," but hey, Tom and Vik go universe-surfing anyway, so who knows where they ended up this time?

Vik turned and stared. Because what else could she do, right?

It wasn’t like he was wearing anything _other_ than a red bow. Right over his – alright, yeah, you got the idea. It’d taken a while to find a bow this fucking big. They probably put these on horses on some shit. Destriers, too – war horses – not _little_ horses.

She was trying not to burst into laughter. Fair enough.

Tom grinned, winked, tossed her some mistletoe.

“Merry Christmas, babe.”

“If _I_ hold the mistletoe,” she said coyly, “does that mean I’m on top?”

“Pff-ha! Hell no, just try it.”


	21. Hunter or Hunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt was "last stand." I did two to the "land stand" prompt, though, so this one gets a different name.

Moonlight spilled through the trees, making silhouettes of the hunters. They thought their traps were smart and their little silver arrowheads would save them.

Yeah, he was already bleeding from his ribs and even from his neck, but that wouldn’t slow _him_ down. Right? He’d be fine. It was just silver.

Shit, he hated silver.

Tom sprung. A roar, a flash of white fangs and the crunch of bone, and one hunter was down.

Throwing back his head, he let his howl pierce the night, so those hunters knew: _I_ _’m coming for you._

They weren’t the hunters here. _He_ was.


	22. A Spark

Blood covered his – everything, just about, and he wasn’t moving, not that she could see from here.

Sadja ran, dropped to his side. He still didn’t move. Her hands searched for some way to help, gathering blood in the process.

“Caid—” she blurted, then paused. Close to him now, she felt something, then realized: if he died, she went with him, didn’t she?

But he wasn’t dying and he wasn’t dead.

His motionless form finally moved, his face twitching, his wide chest rising to suck in a deep breath.

And he coughed out, because of course he did— “I’m fine.”


	23. Last Stand

Some Venatori called facing one werewolf a death sentence.

They didn’t have any sayings about _three_.

But they held their ground, back to back, weapons ready. Caiden with his crossbow level, Sadja with her bow nocked.

“Say, Voros?” she said as the beasts closed in.

Caiden grunted.

Their voices didn’t betray the fear they shared. Fear and something else, something unspoken: a comforting warmth one sent and the other returned, even staring into the face of death. There was a word for it, but he preferred not to give it a name.

She threw him a smile.

“It’s been fun.”


	24. Where are your pants?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caught in the frigid wastes of the Jagged Edge, Caiden tries to find some alone time, but Sadja wants some warmth from her Furnace - and gets more than she bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill: Keeping warm.
> 
> Includes (lite? Non-explicit) smut. If that offends your sensibilities, you have been warned.

The snowstorm was thick enough to make even Tom stop. Out here in the merciless Jagged Edge, however, there wasn’t anywhere _to_ stop.

They found an outcropping of rock that provided the most meager excuse for shelter Caiden had ever seen. By the time they’d run across it, the winds had at least stopped whipping their faces red and numb, but the air was still frigid and a gentle dusting of snow still drifted down from overhead.

Kye was the one to stop, lifting his massive metal gauntlet and directing a claw up at the rocks. “That looks kind of okay.”

Tom stood under the rocks and looked straight up… and frowned, annoyance coming off him in waves, hot enough to turn into frustration. Then again, most everything coming off Tom became hot and angry sooner or later.

From everyone else, there came mingled exhaustion, discouragement, frustration – hot and cold emotions, shifting and unsure what exactly they should be feeling right now. All of it told him more than Tom seemed to grasp – or, at least, more than he seemed to care about right now.

So Caiden stepped up alongside him, pointedly threw Tom a look, and said, “It’ll do.”

That earned Caiden a brief glare and a quiet growl, but he didn’t budge. Finally, Tom muttered, “Fine.”

“Take it _easy_ , Tom.”

Tom muttered something Caiden was ultimately glad to have not fully understood beyond the usual _malakas_ and cursing in various other languages.

By the time everyone had put their gear out, the sun had set and the winds were picking up again. Magnhild settled in with Moonlight, Kye slept under a good four blankets and still shivered, and Fintan picked a spot near the middle of things to start snoring like someone taking a two-man saw to a redwood. Surandil, on the other hand, sat toward an edge of the camp – and Tom paced everywhere, restless and probably about to disappear into the night.

Everything like usual. Or most everything.

At first, Caiden thought he might take his rest closer to the others, help keep watch and maybe even keep his eye out for Tom. But there was too much motion and too much noise. If there was one thing he’d learned about this group very quickly, it was that every single one of them had busy – and demanding – souls.

Tom most of all.

To hell with the risks. Caiden went away from the others, threw the bedroll down, took off all his armor and gear, and finally tried to get comfortable. Out here in the frigid North, where next to nothing could even survive, there was something almost approaching silence.

So he lay down his head and closed his eye. Barely a moment later, he heard the light crunch of snow, and felt a familiar tingle tugging at his soul.

The thickest blanket on top of him moved, started slowly sliding off him like Sadja thought she could pull it off and he wouldn’t notice.

Caiden let her think that for half a second, before his hand shot up and grabbed a thick fistful of the blanket to stop it in place.

Near his feet, Sadja hissed, “Bollocks.”

He chuckled, breathing a short sort of laugh that apparently made her pause. Because when he sat up and looked at her, she was still there, caught with her hand still on the corner of the covers and sitting small and tense like the guilty fox she was.

“Don’t you ever just _sleep_ like a no—” she started, before a corner of that blanket fell away from his shoulders and cold air bit his bare skin, when her words instantly lilted into, “—oh where’d your shirt go, Voros?”

Caiden huffed. And grabbed her arm.

At first, she immediately tried to jerk away from him, because she just had to be contrary. But it only took a strong tug to drag her over to him before she stuffed her legs under his blankets, the trousers she wore felt like ice against his bare skin.

That bare skin being a revelation that made Sadja stop and stare at him.

“Where are your _pants?_ _”_

Caiden didn’t answer that.

Instead, he pulled her into a kiss. A lopsided one, his lips finding only the corner of hers and the smooth skin of a cold cheek, given the way she wouldn’t stop squirming. But that stilled her, made her pull in a quick breath and turn her head suddenly enough to knock her nose against his cheekbone.

All while he got his arms around her body – lithe, firm with muscle but still, to him, just a very _little_ thief. Right now, one made of heat and wicked desire that wound its way into him and tried to wake something primal. And it did a good job.

Caiden slid over her, pushing her underneath him, all the wind-cooled clothing she wore becoming hot as fire against his skin but much more irritating.

One hand found the clasp of the fur cloak around her shoulders, almost snapped it in his grip, then moved down to her armor. The other wasted no time pulling the trousers from her waist, fingers hooking her pants at the same time.

She wound around him, hands running along the rigid muscles of his back, playing over scars that sent him curiosity. That southbound hand went exploring, fingers stirring up something in her throat almost like a purr.

But his fingers went elsewhere, brushed up over her hip.

Teeth nipped at his earlobe, her breath washing down his neck. Trying to taunt him, get him moving. The sharp flare, the pang of _want_ , of _need_ , told him as much. Along with the way her back arched and her nails dug into his back, into the ruts of a scar she’d been investigating.

She bit harder. Riled up a grunt to rumble low in him, turning into something much more like a growl. But he only set himself against her, one hand holding her down as she squirmed and bucked, pinning her leg flat again when she tried to hook his own. Even went so far as trying to shove against him, maybe try to knock him askew and get on top.

It worked another deep growl that vibrated his chest, only this one bordered on a chuckle.

Frustration came next, hotter still than the heat between them. One of her hands on his back shot up, fingers digging at his scalp, tugging his hair. Didn’t stop him from finding one of her pointed ears, brushing his lips over it lightly enough to make her shiver, electrify the air with a wild pulse that made him run his tongue along its knife-shaped tip before barely clicking his teeth against the skin there.

Her hand on his neck now, almost clawing. Maybe looking for that collar to try to tighten it on him, as she did. Too bad for her he’d dared to take it off.

His dare made it all the better and all the worse. Because something of hers had lived in him for a while now, after he’d taken it in. Swallowed it, whole and greedy, and refused to let it out.

That something made it impossible to tell, to really _know_ who was who and what each of them felt. They felt it all together and all at once. He was inside her, she was inside him. Intertwined. Two souls, never quite beginning and never truly ending.

Because, somehow, a mad thread of fate had decided to tie them together. And, _somehow_ _…_ they fit together perfectly.


	25. Frickin' Awesome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when a giant and a dragon meet in the Jagged Edge - and Tom is the one watching the fight?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt was: Two awesome creatures fighting.

In the Jagged Edge, you saw all kinds of stuff. Like giants. And, if you were lucky as hell, you even saw a dragon.

A _dragon_. One with scales shimmering crimson red in the sunlight, massive horns sweeping back on its head and a pair of wings spreading from its back, big enough to encompass an entire peak.

Oh yeah, there was a malakas giant, too. But he was ugly as sin, a face all twisted up and a scraggly beard and wearing armor _bla bla bla_ Tom didn’t really care.

Because the dragon, _that_ was majestic. That was beautiful. That was amazing.

The giant and the dragon met in a pass, the giant hefting his massive axe the size of a small building and swinging it for the dragon’s long (and, if we’re being honest, elegant and downright regal) neck. Seeing it coming, the dragon instantly ducked low, moving fast for something bigger than Tom could almost imagine. Cracking open its toothy maw, the wurm breathed a gout of flame onto the giant’s breastplate already spattered in old, blackish blood.

And the flame of a dragon was nothing if not powerful. The giant stumbled back with a shout that could’ve deafened any gods listening (it certainly made Tom hold his ears and curse enough to make a sailor blanch), his armor all but dripping off him, molten-hot and glowing.

But that axe came around again with newfound fury, finding its mark, this time against the base of the dragon’s neck. With enough force to blast the cap off a mountain, it bit deep into the dragon’s neck and sent it reeling, halfway collapsing on all fours, its maw only open this time to emit a roar (one that was just as deafening as the giant’s scream, but nowhere near as offensive; Tom didn’t cover his ears for that one, even if they did ring like frick).

Smoking blood oozed from the dragon’s wound, but that only stoked its fury. Spreading its wings it, buffeted a blast of air at the giant hard enough to make him stagger awkwardly, teetering on his two too-tall legs. That gave the dragon the only chance it needed…

“We really shouldn’t _stand_ here,” Kye blurted. Again. Gods, couldn’t everybody just be quiet?

“It’s fine, buddy, we’re really far off,” Tom said, waving a hand back at him because _c_ _’mon I’m trying to watch this._

The dragon lunged for the giant’s throat – but he lifted his arm, caught the dragon’s jaws like someone deflecting the bite of a rabid dog. Only this wasn’t a rabid friggen dog, this was a _dragon_ , so that was a _big_ mistake and the dragon _breathed fire all over the giant_ _’s friggen arm_ —

Grunt, behind him. Then a growl: _“Tom.”_

“Caid, please, _DID YOU SEE THAT?_ _”_

The giant screamed and reeled. Releasing the giant’s arm, the dragon reared up on its hind legs, forelegs forward, claws spread, sinking deep into the giant’s shoulders and knocking it off its feet. Crashing, shaking what felt like the entire world, the dragon toppled the giant—

“Ah-right, done, he’s down – bye.” Behind him, he heard Sadja run off, but Tom’s eyes were still glued onto the dragon lifting its head one last time before lunging for the throat of its kill.

“Wait a damn minute fer yer elders!” Fintan bellowed after her, and his waddling boot-falls trudged along after. Until someone, probably Magnhild, scooped him up, which set him sputtering and swearing.

“It would be wise to leave,” Surandil pointed out flatly, and Tom was pretty sure he heard him leaving, too.

The dragon, blood dripping from its massive jaws, lifted that great horned head and turned its gaze toward them, slit pupils locking on and eyes burning like undying embers – ones that flared like they’d just found some new kindling.

In the corner of his vision, Kye slowly lifted a single clawed finger. “Tom… uh…”

“Kye, go,” Caiden ordered. A large, heavy hand fell on Tom’s shoulder and then gripped it like a _vice_ , jerking him around (oh gods, phrasing, not like that) until he looked Caiden in the face. Or, well, sort of more like his throat or something. How the hell did he get so tall anyway? _Asshole._

Behind Tom, the earth shook again. The dragon was moving.

“Move. Now. Or I _will_ carry you.”

Alright, that’d be embarrassing and he’d never live it down, and he knew Caiden meant it.

Well, that and the entire world behind him was starting to feel like an earthquake because that dragon seemed to have taken an interest in them for some reason.

Caiden turned and started running, full out, but not without throwing a look back at him. So Tom took off in his trail, a wild grin on his face.

They were all retreating now, and the others hadn’t really gotten all that far yet. They could probably still hear him when he yelled into the wind.

“But isn’t this _frickin_ _’ AWESOME!?”_


	26. Safe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt: "Safest place to be."

It took a lot to rattle Sadja. To bother her, worry her, and especially to actually scare her. Particularly when it came to fearing for herself.

But, after what had happened barely a few hours ago, she was terrified.

She was, in fact, _more_ than terrified. Caiden didn’t need her inside him to know that – to _feel_ it. Because that something that’d chased her and come so close to catching her was something, some _one_ , she considered a friend. One of the best.

Now that piece of her soul trapped within his own became more restless than ever. Her anxiety and fear wound within him, worse than it would from anyone else. Right now, the soul fragment felt almost physical. Like an orb of pure, black stone taking up all the space in his stomach. Weighing it down and making all the rest of him feel heavy with it.

That part of her seemed to grow tendrils, vines that spread and wound throughout him. Sinking sharp thorns of worry into his heart – and reaching up to wrap a noose around his neck, just before it started to squeeze.

All of it was so distracting he almost forgot she was there, lost in the ruins along with him, stumbling forward in the dark. Soaking wet, after her narrow escape, and with nothing to keep her warm but her usual few scraps of clothing she wore when she wasn’t expecting to be in a life-or-death situation. Because she _hadn_ _’t_ expected it, not this time. None of them had, including him.

Now they were alone. So alone Caiden heard no one else here. Not movement, and not even emotions, except for hers – which were always so acute.

Sadja staggered another step forward, shivering, and nearly fell on her face. Every inch of her shaking. Reflexively, even if she probably would’ve caught herself, Caiden’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm.

“Hey,” he said, voice low and tone gentler than he was, frankly, accustomed to using. “You’ll be fine. He didn’t hurt you.”

At first, she just huffed at him. A strange, confused noise, like she wasn’t sure what to say. Until she finally decided on a quiet, “Bloody hell…”

The fear pulled tighter again, the web of worry tightening all throughout him, squeezing his heart and his neck. Telling him to _do_ something about it.

So he used that hand on her to pull her over to him, but before he could do more, she already had her arms around his middle and practically dived for his chest, burying her face against him. Pressing against the thin shirt he wore, almost too tight for him. He didn’t have _his_ gear, either – just clothes and the green cloak on his back.

“I don’t want to be here,” Sadja said, evenly stated and forcibly calm.

With a huff, Caiden held her close. And, after a moment, reached down to lift her up against him, carrying her a pace or two toward a low crook in the wall he could barely make out in the shadows.

“We’ll leave in the morning,” he said as he went. “By then, he should be back to normal. We can’t go out at night.”

Sadja didn’t say a word. She just mumbled something vague, including, “Mh…”

He sank down, back against the crook in the wall and shoulders threatening to not fit. Sadja’s worry continued to eat at him – and she kept shivering, cold and wet.

Silently, Caiden pulled the cloak from his shoulders and the shirt off his back. He wasn’t cold, by any means, but then again he rarely was. ‘Furnace,’ Sadja liked to call him, even going so far as telling him his soul burned her if he dared to touch his skin when his blood was up.

Right now, though, moving the shirt under Sadja’s face made her lift her head and pause, blinking.

“Why you stripping, Voros?” she asked.

Caiden just grunted.

It wasn’t long before Caiden pulled the shirt, incredibly oversized for her, over her arms and head. Next, he took the cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders, then pulled her against him again.

Her curiosity tingled at him, made his insides twitch.

“Your shirt’s swallowing me up like _you_ do,” Sadja accused, but for maybe the first time in her life, there wasn’t much fire in her voice. She also liked it – he could tell. The weight of that stone in his stomach seemed to lighten, just a little, but enough for him to notice.

“What’s this all about?” she asked next, despite shivering so hard against him.

“You’re freezing,” he said flatly. “Because you’re never wear any damn clothes.”

“So you’re giving me _your_ damn clothes.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Sadja wiggled around against him, and the weight in him let up some more. “Maybe this’s why I don’t _wear_ any ‘damn clothes.’”

Amusement. It chased still more of the fear away, lifted the heaviness. And that would-be orb in his stomach seemed to squirm, reaching out with tiny fingers to try tickling his insides.

Sadja snickered. She tilted her head up at him and wore a tiny grin. Trying to forget all that’d happened – trying to be here in this moment with him instead.

And trying to use that damn soul bond to get him to laugh, purposefully building up her amusement at what had just happened to ridiculous levels – thinking of other things to go with it. Insane things.

It worked. Because all of it made his lip twitch, pulling a lopsided shadow of a smile that quirked the stubble on his face.

But he fought it. “It’s not even that funny.”

The tickling in him got worse, to the point of making him squirm and huff out a low chuckle. Sadja grinned wider in victory.

“It’s _hilarious,_ ” she said, leaning the side of her face into his bare chest. “Especially since I can tell you’re thinking some horny shit, too.”

He shifted in place and grunted at her.

She just snickered again, nuzzling harder into his chest. “Can barely breathe for your fuzz here, Furros.”

_Right_ _…_

“Tickling you inside works better than outside,” she added, her still-cold fingers running along his ribs. “You almost _laughed_. Maybe this soul bond business isn’t so bad.”

He rumbled thoughtfully for a moment, slid one arm down lower to her waist and pulled her even closer against him.

And, at length, said, “No.” He craned his neck back, looking down at her. “Maybe it isn’t.”

When he leaned his head down to give her a kiss, her soul almost seemed to purr, vibrating with energy, within him and without. All the fear was gone.

As always, she didn’t have to say it for him to know what she was feeling: that, no matter what was out there and no matter who it was, she’d be fine here. That here, with him, even inside him, was the safest place to be.


	27. Jolfadr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kye isn't feeling the Yuletide spirit - until he gets a visit from Old Father Winter himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill for December. Prompt: "Santa asks Kye what he wants for Christmas."

He didn’t understand this whole ‘Yule.’ To him, it looked like a bunch of mortals milling around getting a lot of weird seemingly irrelevant things together and setting them all up to look cute or pretty or something and then… being really happy about them and giving each other presents.

No, Kye didn’t understand it _at all_. But he didn’t have to understand it to like it.

He loved it, actually. It was so nice, seeing everyone smiling, hearing some of them sing songs and put up weird decorations around their campsite out in the middle of nowhere.

It all had stuff to do with the gods, though, so Kye felt a little left out. Because, well, he couldn’t get near anything to do with the gods. He heard about them blessing people all the time, but _he_ never got blessed.

So when they all went to bed that night, Kye trudged a little sadly through the doorway and pushed it shut behind him with one of his wings. Tom was already in there, because they had to share a room and had split the space in half. Tom’s half was already pretty messy, with his armor and gear thrown around without a care.

Tom was already laying in his bedroll when Kye came in, and he sat up, tilting his head at him.

“You okay, buddy? You look tired.”

Kye put on the fakest smile ever and shrugged. “I’m okay.”

He frowned. “You just need some sleep. Hey, you don’t snore, right?”

“No… I guess not. I dunno.”

“Great,” Tom said, flopping back onto his side, back facing him. “Good night, Kye.”

“G’night, Tom,” Kye replied quietly as he found his own bedroll in the far corner and crawled into it, wrapping himself in one wing and, eventually, drifting off to sleep.

Almost the moment he did, he woke up. Except now he was in a big, snowy forest of tall pine trees, all dusted in snow and bathed in the light of the moon and shimmering colors of the aurora borealis overhead.

Kye stopped and stared up. He’d _always_ wanted to see the mortals’ dancing lights in the sky.

Before he could really start to take in all their beauty, though, something appeared before them. Flying through the sky – or maybe it was _running?_ – and descending toward him fast.

A horse and a rider. A horse with _eight legs_ and a tall rider with one eye, kind of like Caiden, and a very long and thick beard as pure white as the driven snow. He wore a suit of fine armor, some of it touched with gold, and all of it covered in runes and weird designs Kye had no idea about. On his head he wore a kind of helmet headdress thing bearing two great, long horns.

And in his hands he carried a spear. Kye recognized him instantly.

Odin, Father of Men. Spearman. Lord of the Aesir. Flame-eyed. Wise One. Lord of the Earth. Battle Wolf— this god had so many more names than Kye even knew what to do with, and he’d learned them, heard them all from the demons who feared to speak any single one of those names in their language, this one, or another.

Kye froze in place. His blood turned to ice. Odin would ride down here and strike him down with barely a look, maybe just one wave of his spear, Gungnir, and it’d all be over. He’d come so far for nothing, all to be noticed by a god, so he could be slain like the disgusting demon he was.

Odin came to a halt just before him, one blue eye staring hard into Kye’s own. Kye didn’t want to meet that gaze – he _couldn_ _’t_ – but he did. Try as he might, he couldn’t look away.

“You,” said Odin, “are strangely kind for one of demon blood.”

Kye blinked. Stared.

“This is not one of your many nightmares, Kye Vakurseth.”

Kye blinked.

Stared.

“One such as you, resisting the taint and temptation of evil so mightily, deserves reward on Yuletide.” Odin maintained his piercing stare, one that stared straight into Kye’s naked soul, saw everything inside him and left nothing unnoticed.

But then Odin said, “Tell me what you desire.”

Kye squeaked. Odin didn’t move. Trying again, Kye swallowed hard and took a shaky breath.

“I… um… I – don’t understand.”

“I am asking you what you desire on this holy day, Kye Vakurseth.”

_Oh. Okay?_

“Umm… I… can’t think of much,” Kye managed weakly, his voice hoarse and wanting to run and hide even worse than everything else about him did. “I mean, I would like some friendship, I guess…”

“This, you already possess.”

“Oh. I… guess, maybe.”

Odin stared at him harder.

 _Wow._ Yeah, okay, Odin was right. But nobody could really argue with a god, anyway.

“Uh… I like good food? Mortals have nice food.”

“There was much of this at the feast. I understand you are unused to being asked what you desire. What you, specifically, would ‘like.’”

“Y-yeah – I mean, yeah, I am.”

It took him a moment. But finally, he blurted, “I really like horses but they don’t like me and I wish I had a horse that _liked_ me, like – liked me a lot, all loyal and nice, like Ghost is with Tom. I really love those extra pretty ones in the mortal storybooks, the ones that have a horn for some reason, but I guess they wouldn’t like me at all—”

“Hm.”

Odin interrupted him. Kye snapped his mouth shut instantly and cringed, tensing up, eyes shut, just waiting for this god to smite him. But he didn’t.

So Kye quietly asked, “Is this real?”

“Ask yourself,” replied Odin, “that same question when you awaken. Merry Yuletide, Kye, and good night.”

And with a wave of his spear, that pretty nighttime forest and the lights in the sky faded away.

It didn’t take Kye long to wake up after that. And he sat up, blinking, with the sun slowly starting to spill through the window. Getting up and quietly padding over to it, Kye peered outside.

Staring right back at him was a tall, sleek, and solid white unicorn.

And Kye had never quite smiled like that in his entire life.


	28. Not Giving Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr OTP ask fill - wrote a little drabble for it.  
> "Who would love the other no matter how evil the other became."  
> Answer? Caiden would never give up on Sadja if she became evil for some reason.

She’d killed again. Why, he didn’t know. Things hadn’t felt right since it started. Felt wrong about _her,_ about that part of her inside him. It was scared.

Something was very wrong.

Caiden rose to his feet again, glancing around the forest. Tracking her was hard, especially when she could feel him coming. They had that little problem: he could find her, she could find him. She stayed one step ahead, but no matter how many steps she took, he was still always behind her.

Didn’t want her to die, out here without part of her soul. The part he carried with _him_ instead.

More than that, though, he had to stop her. _Save_ her, maybe, from whatever was going on. Because, for better or for worse, he wasn’t giving up. Not on her.

He’d _never_ give up on her.


	29. Together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr OTP ask fill - wrote a little drabble for it.  
> "Who would leave their friends, family, and life to move overseas to be with the other one."

Sadja leaned forward on the railing of that little ship, watching. Voros was busy giving his little sister the biggest and deadliest bear hug Sadja had ever seen. She picked another splinter off the railing (oops) and flicked it into the ocean.

Voros came over soon after that, a heavy sack thrown over one shoulder. He crossed the gangplank, which creaked when he set foot on it, and Sadja eyed him, then eyed Plexaura, then eyed him again.

“I _can_ go alone,” she reminded.

That earned her a look. A _look_. As he pointedly threw open the hatch below decks, tossed the sack in, and let it fall shut again. Then came over, untied the mooring, and stopped right in front of her. He lifted one hand, fingers brushing her shoulder and down her arm before wandering around her front, feeling their way along a buckle of her armor.

All he said was, “I know.”

Then he threw the mooring rope off the ship and back onto the dock.


	30. Personal Pranking Poltergeist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom and Vik finally find something Tom is truly bad at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr OTP ask fill - wrote a little drabble for it.  
> "Who would haunt the other after death and chase away other suitors."  
> Tom would never make Vik miserable, though, so here's what I wrote instead.

Boring. So boring.

So he threw a thing across the room, without paying much attention to what it was. Something or another that Vik squeezed for stress sometimes. From where she lay on the bed reading, Vik didn’t even start.

“Hi, Tom.”

 _“I’m boooored,”_ Tom fussed, appearing with his chin on the bed (but not really, because ghost), staring at her. She was real used to this by now, and she just gave him a look.

He wanted to put his chin on that pretty head of hers _so bad_ and he really tried to ignore it. Being a ghost _sucked_. 0/10, don’t ever try it, can’t recommend.

Of course, dying sucked worse, because at least he got to do this and still got to see her.

She tried flicking his nose, which of course probably just made her finger cold, because it went through his head instead. “Please don’t keep trying the _oooo_ ghost thing.”

Tom put on a lopsided grin. _“That’s half the fun.”_

“You’re terrible at it.”

_“Did we finally find something I’m terrible at?”_

“Mh, I’ll add it to the list.”

 _“Pff, list, there is no_ list _. The only thing I_ _’m bad at is being dead. ‘Cause I can’t even_ stay _dead._ _”_

“Why _is_ that?” she asked, quirking a brow at him. She was always so curious, it was adorable.

But hey, even now that he was dead, he still considered himself honor-bound to never lie.

So he shrugged and said, _“I love you too much. Life was boring without you in it, and now death is boring without you in it. So… Here I am. Your personal pranking poltergeist, and you’re never,_ ever _gonna get rid of me._ _”_

He grinned, and went through the bed to come out on top of it alongside her.

_“Better get used to it, babe. Now give me a hug, I need you inside me.”_


	31. Failure to Communicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fintan didn't really meant it THAT way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This lame joke popped into my head during a conversation and I'm trying to write literally anything right now, so have a proper 100-word drabble.

All the young folks kept yammering away as fast as they could. Most of them, anyway; Caiden still hadn’t said anything, even while everyone else argued where to go next.

Fintan barely listened. Didn’t damn matter where they went, he learned that a long time ago. So he sat and enjoyed his pipeweed, blowing a few smoke rings and listening to Caiden clear his throat whenever somebody mentioned going somewhere around Redfield.

But he wouldn’t bloody say why, except grunting.

“Frog in yer throat, kid?” Fintan asked, giving Caiden a look.

“He swallowed a _frog_ now?” Sadja blurted.

Caiden bristled.


	32. Overboard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vik isn't familiar with ships, so Tom has a lot of fun teaching her about them. Too bad today's lesson is unplanned for and involves going overboard - in a storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill! Catching up on these.  
> As always, Sinvik is from Taff's stories, not my own.

Ships were nice, or at least Tom thought so right now. He didn’t always, back when he was struggling with all that lycanthropy and shit. But now? Now they were _awesome_. These ships especially. They reminded him of the old ships back home.

Plus, Vik didn’t really know what the fuck a ship was, and it was just _so much fun_ to educate her.

You know, until she fell into the drink.

It happened really fast. Oh yeah, and it was storming. Fine, he probably shouldn’t have let her even near the railing, but it wasn’t like the ship or the sea really worried her much, she was fascinated by it all like a cat and gods knew she didn’t have enough good sense to not spit in fate’s face like that.

He loved her so much for it. Now he just had to make sure he could _keep_ loving her for it.

She went right over the side when the ship bucked, disappearing into the angry, pounding grey mist around the ship. Tom’s spine straightened out like a taut rope and he stared for half a second trying to figure out if he’d seen it wrong – but no, she was definitely gone.

“ _VIK!_ ” he yelled, suddenly hoarse and vaulting right over his _own_ railing, the one around his little captain’s perch above the forecastle. Before his feet even hit the deck, he roared against the wind (not at all hoarse anymore), “Hold the oars! _Full stop!_ ”

He wanted this thing dead in the water, but he knew he couldn’t really get that, not with things they were right now. Bounding strides eating up the deck between him and the railing she’d gone over, Tom threw off his helmet and the swords on his back, letting them clatter down behind him as he cleared the railing in a single leap, diving right into the water, pointed hands slicing like a knife through the churning ocean surface.

Holy shit, it was _cold_.

The icy water tried to steal his breath away, but he held onto it as he drove ever deeper, swimming hard against the choppy-ass sea and wondering vaguely if he’d just dealt them _both_ in for this, but – no way. No. He was fine. He had this.

And he _did_ , too, because he saw her not too far off now, a limp little shape black against the ugly greys and blues of the dark, stormy water. Brine burning his eyes, Tom swam still harder until he reached her, grabbing her arm and pulling her over to drape her over his back, whirling to swim back toward the pitching black underbelly of the ship overhead just as his muscles started to burn.

His lungs burned, too. Just a little. He _totally_ had this.

Tom stuffed Vik’s arms around his chest and under a strap there (you know, one of the only things he was wearing— what? He _had_ pteruges; stop assuming) and tightened it hard so he could dedicate both arms to getting them both to the ship caught in the storm like the little floating corks he tended to terrorize whenever he had too much booze in the bathtub.

Reaching the ship wasn’t that bad, actually. And somehow, his fingers found purchase on the sides even with their fine coating of greenish slime from algae and whatever in the hell had taken to growing there. He hauled himself up, getting more than one mouthful of seawater along the way and occasionally having to hold on for dear life.

But hey, the storm was passing now. Really fast. Like whatever god had thrown it at them (definitely Zeus, not Poseidon – Zeus was kind of an asshole, Athena protect him from getting stuck with lightning _right now_ ) was pitching a fit that he’d managed to get Vik back, and now that god was going off to sulk.

It was night, though, so no nice rays of sun to light everything up like a new day and remind everyone they were still alive. Just a whole lot of moonlight as the clouds began to part, dismissing every single burn in his previously aching muscles and making him nothing short of hungry and angry.

He didn’t waste a second. Coughing, gasping to get his breath back, Tom pulled Vik’s arms out of the harness on his chest – the harness went with it, he really didn’t care – and lowered her to the deck.

“Vik— Vikvikvik—” he sputtered, fingers brushing her face, gently patting down the entire length of her body, like he thought she was some fragile little thing that’d probably been broken, which he knew damn well wasn’t true but— _Holy shit she isn’t breathing._

“Vik. _Vik_.” He knelt over her, until that wasn’t good enough and he straddled her, until _that_ wasn’t good enough and he got beside her and pulled her over into his arms and against his chest still smelling like seawater and squeezed her shoulder, then squeezed her hip – he got his fingers under her chin and tilted her head back to look at him.

“I’m right here, c’mon— look at me, open your eyes.”

He blinked. Stared. Swallowed.

She didn’t move.

Something that’d gotten stuck in his throat started swelling until he felt like he could barely swallow, despite choking and swallowing compulsively because this was crazy and she wouldn’t have drowned and he wasn’t about to cry his eyes out over her because she was dead.

She _wasn’t_ dead. This was just – it was – **_no_**.

He pawed at her uselessly because _what the fuck did you do when somebody stopped breathing_ and he needed to do _SOMETHING_ , but—

“Vik— Vik baby, please, don’t do this…”

Her face twitched. Her lips, actually. Into a _smile._

It was subtle, at least at first, until it pulled a little more as she finally let herself breathe. Which made her sputter and cough and start gasping, blinking her eyes open and looking at him.

She’d faked it.

She’d _faked_ it.

For a second, Tom stared. His jaw worked and nothing at all came out, until a weird little sound finally started pushing around in his throat and didn’t really turn into anything that made any sense.

Vik laughed. “Do you know how _sweet_ you are when you panic?” she asked, like nothing had happened and everything was perfectly fine, all while brushing a finger down his scratchy cheek.

Tom pulled in a deep breath and stared at her, lifting his head enough for his chin to poke out.

And he said, “You’re evil. You’re a fucking _evil witch_ and I don’t know why I love you— gods, I love you so fucking much, come here, you’re mine—”

Tom scrambled to his feet with her still in his arms and kicked open the door to their cabin.


	33. Headache

“I haven’t heard any new names for a while,” Tom said, poking the fire as his eyebrows rode up on his face and he threw Sadja a look.

“Boros,” Sadja said thoughtfully.

“Snoros. I know that one.”

Caiden grunted. He never snored.

“Stompos. Gigantos. Tallos.”

“Slowos?”

“Mh. Furros.”

“Wait, what?”

“Body hair.”

Tom blinked. “Sssuuure. How about… Eatos?”

“Gulpos.”

“Swall… os? Swallow-os?”

“Growlos.”

_“Gruntos.”_

Caiden got to his feet. Walked around behind the two of them where they sat beside each other on the log. They kept going – more nicknames.

So Caiden took their heads and knocked them together.


	34. Dragonos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a dragon learns the best cure for itchy scales is getting a little elf to scratch them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill involving a dragon with itchy scales. So that dragon is now Caiden in his original iteration as a green dragon - AKA, Dragonos.

Voros sure had been quiet lately, not that that was terribly new for him. He was always sitting stoically someplace or stoically laying on his belly and snoozing while smoke rose from his nostrils.

What? He _was_ a dragon. Big, green one, in fact, majestic horns and frill and all, plus those ginormous teeth.

Sadja wandered back into his cave one day to find him lying there dragging his claws over his scales and kicking up such a racket that Sadja put her hands over her ears. Caiden wore a particular look as he did it: a scowl, like usual (yes, even on a dragon face), except this one had an edge of _shit, it itches_. If she was reading his scowls right. And she prided herself on reading his scowls. And grunts. And huffs. And all the rest of his particular language.

“Vor- _ooos_ ,” she called across the chamber. Somehow, he heard her over all the bloody fuss and stopped immediately, blinking that one blue eye and rolling over onto his chest, getting his legs underneath him so he could sit up and almost hit his head on the top of the cave, because there wasn’t ever a moment when Voros wasn’t unfairly enormous to the point of being downright rude.

Now she had to crane her neck just to look up at his chin way up somewhere above her head. Least until he pointed his nose down at her so he could huff.

“Itchy scales?” she asked, heading on over to one of his great big clawed paw-hand-claw-talon— whatever in the frick you called those on dragons. The front hand paw things with claws on them. Was it still a paw if it was covered in scales, and was it really a ‘hand?’ Hell if she knew.

At first, all she got out of him was a hesitant, thoughtful rumble low and loud enough to start vibrating the rocks around her. She thought she saw one pebble do a little dance near his claw she sat on, which was just about as big as she was. The individual claw, not his entire paw-hand-thing.

“Don’t bring your cave down on your head.”

_Grunt._

“Wouldn’t come down on _my_ head, ‘cause your head comes first.” Sadja paused, made a face. _Hehe—_ there was a lame joke she could force out of that. If she said it she might even get one of her favorite varieties of grunts out of him.

Before she could, though, Voros finally said in that same usual gruff, very _dragon_ voice that filled the whole cavern and threatened to make it shake again, “Yeah.”

_Yeah_ , that was all she got, a _yeah_. Good enough.

“Where’s it itch?”

_Grrmm…_ “I’m fine.”

“Where’s it itch, Grumpos?”

“You’re too small to scratch it.”

Sadja’s jaw came a little loose. “Oi, that _stings_.”

_Grmph, huff_. “I don’t mean _that_.”

Little late for him to add anything, though, because she was already finding handholds in scars and various pointier scales along his foreleg, climbing right up it and feeling an awful lot like a cat scaling the largest, grouchiest oaf of a tree with far too few limbs for grabbing.

Voros didn’t move, though, or at least not his leg. He just turned his head down toward her again and curved his long dragony neck low to get a look at her. She heard his tail scoot around on the stones somewhere behind him, which she could only assume meant he liked this. Obviously. That was what animals did with tails. Not that Voros was an animal, or so the Duckling had told her ten thousand times about _“DRAGONS.”_

She got near his chest, or at least part of his chest considering how vast his chest was, and wedged one hand under a scale there as far as she could go to give whatever skin was underneath it a good scratching.

That earned her another grunt, this one of the slightly surprised variety, as Voros’s head came nearer until his nose nudged her shoulder so gently it barely brushed her skin. Always trying to be so careful with his giant dragon-ness, that Voros. It made her wonder if he hadn’t had some accident to do with it before. She’d seen what he did to people he didn’t like, after all.

“Feel nice?”

_Hrm,_ he replied approvingly somewhere low in his throat, just before taking a short sniff of her to huff again. All over her this time, which nearly blew her off his blasted leg.

She grinned and scratched him a little harder. “Where else does it itch?”

Voros didn’t really answer that. He just said, “Hang on.”

Then he lifted his leg with her on it, prompting her to stick her neck out – literally and figuratively – to get a good view of everything up here. He was busy rolling over onto his back, but his head was _just_ close enough—

Sadja abruptly got to her feet, balanced only half a second on his foreleg, and jumped the gap between there toward his snout.

She misjudged a little, since she ended up scrabbling along his snout before finding a tooth that poked enough for her to hold onto with one hand (good thing she managed to not get stuck) and dangle there, grinning all the while.

That made Voros pause, especially as she, of course, dangled on the _left_ side of his face, so she could almost sense the distress of _What the hell just happened?_

Sadja stuck her fingers in the crook of his mouth (now _there_ was a new grunt if she’d ever heard one), found a ridge on his nose to grab onto, and hoisted herself up to sit on his snout and, yes, grin at him some more.

“That was fun.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” he said, “do that.”

“Do what?” she asked, leaning far over to the left, on purpose, to try to figure out just what was his ear and if she could give that some attention and maybe see if she could get a dragon all bothered while he was dragony. Talk about a feat.

But she missed her chance, as his great claws came up over her head again and two descended to _very_ carefully snatch her up by the clothes like a cat by the scruff. They plucked her off his snout to set her square on his stomach so he could glare at her some more.

“Don’t jump where I can’t see you.”

“So the jumping in general is fine.” She paused and looked around as Voros’s giant snout inched closer again. “Are you asking me to scratch your belly?”

The glare turned to a flat-out stare instead. “Yeah. I am. Turns out you’re pretty good at it… For a bite-sized elf.”

Sadja huffed, flicked the chiseled dragon nose right next to her head, wondered for a second if that was a hint of a smile pulling at his face, and then went to find the best place to start scratching.


	35. Stocks and Bonds (but not like you think)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Shackled together" taken to the next level, which isn't something Tom or Caiden exactly planned on, but it's what they've gotten themselves into.

The wood tried to crush his throat, chafing his neck. Not to mention his wrists—

“’Werewolfery’ is a stupid word.”

Caiden grunted. Glanced to his right, not that he _could_ glance to his left, and lifted his hand to look past it at Tom’s head poking out from the longer end of the wooden pillory, turning this way and that. Twisting his fists around in the stocks, too, and tugging on them.

“Is it even a _word?_ What about lycanthropy? Or better yet just say ‘turning into a monster and eating people’ and get it over with…”

“Tom.”

“And ‘witchcraft?’ You? The guy called you a sorcerer – that’s just crazy, you didn’t even do anything but…”

Why the hell did they have to restrain him with his blind side facing out? And why did Tom have to _talk_ to cope with the flames howling away inside him at the restraints? He didn’t show any sign of stopping—

“…Actually, it was pretty weird, Caid.”

“ _Tom,_ ” Caiden snapped.

Tom stopped instantly at that tone, the fire in him shrinking and hiding somewhere. _Finally._

Son of a bitch, he missed that collar. But he had Tom’s attention for now, so he needed to use it. It never did last long.

“They’re going to kill us at sunrise. It’ll take too long for any Venatori or Inquisitors to get here and handle us, so they’re going to try to do it themselves.”

Tom quirked a brow. “You’ve seen this before, huh?”

“The aftermath, anyway.”

Tom stared. Something in him curled into a knot. Caiden felt it.

“It isn’t always what you think,” Caiden added.

Last time he’d heard about a mob trying to hang a werewolf, none of them survived except the werewolf. It had the Venatori after it for months before they lost the trail. But it didn’t seem in Tom’s best interests to tell him what that town looked like afterward.

“Guess they _would_ string me up during a new moon,” Tom muttered, yanking his head hard against the stocks and swearing at how hard his skull knocked into the back of them, as if any of that did any good. “This _sucks_. Gods, I’m tired as shit…”

_Right_. The new moon. No wonder the man and the beast in Tom were both scared. His abilities were all on the wane. Which was also probably why the rage in him started trying to panic, flaring up so suddenly it snapped the hairs on the back of Caiden’s neck to full attention.

Before he could suggest kicking the post both their pillories were anchored to, Tom lifted his foot and slammed the heel of his boot into that post as hard as he could. It sent a shock up the entire thing and rattled both their skulls, but Caiden gave it another kick, himself. Then another.

And Tom let out something like a strangled roar, pitching in the stocks hard enough that, somehow, Caiden’s next blow to the post was answered with a wrenching snap – and _he_ was wrenched, too, as Tom staggered forward and nearly sent them both tumbling off the wooden platform they’d been restrained to for show.

Until Tom promptly teetered and lost his balance, dragging Caiden along with him over the edge. They landed hard in a heap, with Tom spitting sand and his fury billowing high in an inferno that stoked Caiden’s own.

“Alright— okay—” Tom sputtered, scrambling on his legs, trying to stand up and jerking his arms around as if that’d get his wrists free, “this _really_ isn’t funny anymore—”

Caiden bristled, swallowed, and tried to fight it. A low growl worked its way up his chest and he threw Tom another look.

“Keep it together,” he ordered.

Tom almost didn’t hear him. He was shaking now. The new moon didn’t seem to matter too much under this kind of pressure – the exhausted Wolf was howling itself hoarse, unable to get out, and Caiden was getting sick of listening to it, sensing it clawing around in there. And he _knew_ Tom couldn’t take what he was feeling.

“Look, Caid,” Tom blurted, “I dunno what you’re into but _I_ _don’t like being trapped._ ”

Caiden stared at him. “This isn’t a cage.”

That made him pause again, finally meet his gaze. And the Wolf came, trying to drive that primal, ancient terror into Caiden that it always did from behind Tom’s eyes. Didn’t matter who or what he looked at – the beast was always there. Always staring. Always terrifying.

But always seeming to respond when he said—

“Tom.”

Tom blinked, glanced at the ground instead.

“Take a breath,” Caiden said as he managed to get his legs underneath him and start to stand up, “and come on. You’re fine.”

He did what Caiden said, at least: he took a breath, and he got to his feet quickly when Caiden lifted the pillory enough that it started pulling on him. Then Caiden started walking, taking the lead, while their heads and wrists were still firmly all chained together in the same long plank of wood.

They looked fricking ridiculous. He didn’t need to be told that to know it.

“Actually I take that back, sometimes being restrained is a little fun,” Tom muttered under his breath. “Maybe. Sort of. You know what, frick. Why am I thinking about this?”

Caiden rolled his eye.

“And how come _you_ get to lead and drag me along?”

“Because you were ready to break down instead.”

“Oh yeah?” The pillory pulled – hard enough to knock against Caiden’s throat and choke a grunt out of him as Tom abruptly started walking in the opposite direction.

So Caiden planted his feet, heels digging into the dirt road. That lasted an inch or two of Tom fighting it before he went still, panting and puffing out another curse. Something about new moons, even though it sounded like he cursed moonlight itself in the same breath.

“Can you smell them?” Caiden asked, twisting his neck around enough to try looking at Tom again.

“Yeah – yeah, sure, I’m not _completely_ useless.”

After that, Tom led with at least a little more confidence. Stopping now and then to sniff, or to crouch and tug until Caiden crouched along with him, as he tried to find any familiar scents.

“Sorry I’m – y’know. A jackass.”

Caiden grunted.

“It isn’t really me,” Tom added quickly.

He rumbled pensively for a second and said, “Not _always_. You’d be surprised how hard it is to tell with you.”

Tom paused and glanced at him, narrowing his eyes. Then he snorted, stood up, and kept walking.

“That’s real cute, Caid, getting all deep like that. You going to watch our backs while I lead?”

Caiden tried to look behind them. It was difficult, with his blind side facing that way, and he admitted halfway in a growl, “I can’t see shit.”

Didn’t take long after that for something to go wrong. Caiden wasn’t sure what it was at first. A feeling – then the butt of a pitchfork hard against his lower back as a trio of the superstitious locals from the town caught up to them. Caiden couldn’t see much, not in the restraints.

But as one knee tried to buckle on him, he didn’t let it. The people around them started yelling, things about warlocks, demons, and werewolves. So Caiden stood up, locked his shoulders, tilted his trunk enough to lift Tom into the air and swing him in the general direction of one of the voices.

A yowl and a crack split the air, followed by a loud, _“HA!”_ from Tom, which meant that worked and his boots had met someone’s skull.

That was all it took to send the other two running, probably for help, or else because they didn’t want to die at the hands of a werewolf and a supposed sorcerer. They were half right, at least. Or maybe three-quarters.

“I kicked that guy’s _ass_ , that was great,” Tom said as they resumed walking, picking up the pace.

At least Tom seemed to be enjoying this now.

 

 

Thankfully, they reached the camp pretty fast. Or where the camp was _supposed_ to be. But when they got there, all that remained was an ashen campfire and some dirt where they’d pitched the tents the night before.

Tom took a breath, undoubtedly to swear, just as the wolfdog Moonlight emerged from under a nearby tree, his silver-white fur glimmering in the starlight. Instantly, his tongue lolled out and his tail wagged madly as he padded over with something tied loosely around his neck. Looked like a note, strung there with a piece of rope, because Moonlight never wore a collar.

“Heeyy, boy, how’re you doing?” Tom said, and that fire in his soul eased off like the Wolf felt it would finally try getting some rest. “You got something for us—oh, hey, look, you don’t _have_ to sniff my crotch every time, you already know me. Do we have to keep doing this?”

The pillory rattled again as Tom tried using his leg to fend Moonlight off.

“Go sniff Caid, his crotch is super reachable.”

_What._ Caiden threw him a look.

Tom shrugged. “Hey, remember I had to hit you in the nuts once, I _have_ thought about it.” He paused. “Sorry about that, by the way. Did I ever say sorry?”

Caiden huffed and dropped into a crouch abruptly enough it made Tom yelp and nearly pulled one foot out from under him. But he went down, too, and started literally nosing after the note around Moonlight’s neck.

“Just hold still – that’s it— bluh, Moony, I can’t get it when you’re licking— _pfahh,_ please with the tongue in my _face_ —”

This would take all night.

“Moonlight, sit.”

Moonlight’s ears twitched in Caiden’s direction, so Caiden pointedly huffed – and got a huff back from the wolfdog, but he sat back on his haunches anyway. Almost reluctantly, and giving Caiden a particularly annoyed look and an almost vindictive feeling.

Tom snickered at the ensuing staring contest, got the rope between his teeth to pull it off, and after some trial and error, got the note into one hand so he could crane his neck back and read it.

While he was busy doing that, Moonlight padded on over to Caiden instead and started licking his chin. Then his nose, then his lips, then—

Caiden huffed.

“Surandil left us a note,” Tom said as he finally managed to get a look at it. “‘We moved camp, Moonlight will lead you under Magnhild’s orders.’”

Suddenly, Moonlight snapped to attention, almost leaping back from the two of them and standing there with his tail wagging wildly, looking back over his shoulder, ears pricked forward. Eager for them to follow.

So they followed, as awkward as ever with the pillory still holding them both. It was getting older by the second, and Caiden squinted far into the distance of the dark night, seeing only what looked like a distant spark of a fire anywhere in the direction Moonlight was leading them.

“Ah…” Tom frowned. “We’ve got a long way to walk.”

Caiden grunted an affirmative.

Another moment of silence passed. Then another. Caiden knew this wouldn’t last long.

And, right on time, Tom said, “Do you think they’re gonna laugh?”

Easy answer. “Yeah.”

“At least this isn’t the first time Magnhild’s seen me in a compromising position.”

Caiden paused. He really didn’t want to know.

“Yeeahh nevermind, not what I meant… At least Surandil won’t laugh, right?”

“He won’t laugh where you can hear him.”

Tom’s very soul seemed to recoil. “He do what now?”

Caiden grunted.

“Oh. Oh _great_. He’s laughed at me before and I never frickin knew it. Probably laughing at me all the time, that pointy-eared…”

Caiden snorted.

“Ah ah, not you too.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem.”

“What?”

“And out comes the whatting.”

This was getting older even faster. “ _What?_ ”

“Caid, you’re such a great guy, but it’s no wonder people tease you.”

_Son of a…_ “Don’t make this walk longer than it has to be, Tom.”

Tom grinned. “Oh, this is about to be the longest walk of your _life_.”

He didn’t have much doubt of that. Not at this point.

Still, he said, “Maybe. I’ve had a lot of long walks.”

“Was your neck shackled?”

“Once.”

Tom’s eyebrows rocketed up on his face so fast they would’ve disappeared under his helmet if he had one. And all at once he was brimming with absurd curiosity and amusement.

Caiden huffed. “Come on…”

“Whaat?”

“Shut up.”

Now Tom grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “What was it you said a second ago? ‘ _I_ didn’t say anything.’”

Tugging hard, Caiden pulled on the pillory before Tom could react and made him stumble, almost losing his footing again. But Tom only laughed.

“Hey, Caid, you can’t run away when I get nosy now. How about twenty questions?”

“No.”

Nevermind. This _would_ be the longest walk of his life.


	36. Ice Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a Tumblr prompt for an OC ask about Tom and Vik.

_“Viiiik,”_ Tom had whined, coming and practically draping himself over her (which of course made her huff and sag horribly in the chair, squirming and shoving to get him off, because he was seriously too big to be doing that kind of thing), _“it’s so_ boring _and I_ _’m_ hungry _, let_ _’s go get ice cream.”_

Hey, it’d worked.

Because now here they were with a pair of ice cream cones. She’d gotten lemon – and he’d bought an entire bucket of it for later, not that he told her about that – and he got— oh come on, what do you think he got? Seriously. Ice cream. Think about it.

Chocolate, _duh_. Plus this stupidly expensive ice cream (highway robbery, but honestly, worth it more than a coffee) was richer than his liege lord, so it was amazing.

They found a table and sat down, Vik being all dainty and neat and clean and making sure that ice cream wasn’t going anywhere she didn’t want it to. Tom got some on his nose already (don’t you dare say anything), and got impatient enough to bite the cone before he knew it was good for him, and _that_ of course made ice cream start leaking, it got on his chin, it got on— yeah alright suddenly he was five years old.

It also got Vik to snicker at him, though. Over her – wait, why did she— she just finished snapping a few pictures of him. Tom froze and stared like an animal that’d seen its photographer and was ready to bolt.

“ _That_ looks awfully familiar on you, Tom,” she said, licking her cone again. “Except it wasn’t chocolate.”

“Oh, _ha ha_ ,” Tom retorted. “So you’re _always_ really clean about everything, huh?”

She smiled coyly. “The word is ‘efficient.’ And ‘precise.’”

Tom stuck his tongue out at her. “That’s _two_ words.”

“Mh.”

“So are you gonna be this efficient and precise with me again later? That’d be great. Because I’m envying the hell out of that ice cream, Vik.”

Vik threw him a look, mid-lick, which was totally on purpose, and quirked a brow. Tom grinned.

And then started to impatiently devour the ice cream cone because he was now officially in _ready to go,_ wolfing-down-food (yes, puns intended) mode and all savoring was over.


	37. Shine a Light

All he had to follow was a trail left by an errant half a soul. The part of her inside him struggled from within, tried to push him along. He huffed at it, as if that did any good. Caiden was already going as fast as he could.  
  
Then he felt it. A jolt, from within and from without. Somewhere in the pitch blackness of the mountain tunnels closing in around his shoulders.  
  
No torch. Didn’t need one to find her. Ahead, he saw the shifting form of a fox - of Sadja’s soul.  
  
That was all the light he needed.


	38. Full Moon

Pain flooded every inch of his being. His knees buckled, his spine arched. A scream ripped from his chest, tearing up his throat and splitting the night, twisting around itself until it became something wrong.  
  
The howl of a beast. Inhuman.  
  
The cry of the werewolf.  
  
That sound spread terror as it echoed across fel and delve, leaving wide eyes and racing hearts in its wake. Doors were slammed shut, lights put out, as people for leagues hid themselves, barricaded their doors, and prayed the monster would not come for them.  
  
For they knew, if it did, they were lost.


	39. Bad Timing

Twilight. Yeah, it was pretty. And a whole gang of heavily-armed thugs surrounded him like they had any idea what they were doing.  
  
Tom dusted himself off. “I’d feel really bad - okay, not _really_ bad, just a _little_ bad - if I ate all you guys, so why don’t you just run?”  
  
Several of them laughed. “Not even night, freak! Get on the ground!”  
  
They wanted a bounty, by the way. Cute, right?  
  
The full moon was already hanging in the sky, waiting to start its reign, and Tom cracked his neck.  
  
“Hey, alright. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”


	40. Friendly Neighborhood Werewolf

Tom licked his lips, standing over corpses. He twitched an ear (yes, he was a werewolf; you think he ate people in human form?) toward the terrified family quivering in the doorway of their broken-into farmhouse.  
  
The little girl had dropped her doll. Stooping, Tom scooped it up in one hand and strode over, kneeling all the way to her level.  
  
He smiled. Wagged his tail. Kid was terrified - not like he could blame her. Being smiled at by such a charming werewolf? C’mon.  
  
She did take the doll, though. Even gave him a hug. Definitely a good night.


	41. Whoops

“Can anybody see anything?” Sadja asked.  
  
“Not me,” Kye blurted instantly.  
  
Caiden grunted a negative. There was some rustling, too, and creaking of leather. Sadja getting busy hunkering herself near Caiden.  
  
“Inconsiderate as hell, puttin’ yer elders through shit like this,” Fintan declared.  
  
“This was not on purpose,” said Surandil.  
  
“Oh-ho? Who’s the one who tosses around shadow, elf?”  
  
“Guys,” Tom interrupted. He could see just fine, by the way. Werewolf and all that. Yeah, it definitely had perks. “Relax. I can see just fine.”  
  
Ow. Pain. Wait, it was a full moon, too.  
  
Nevermind, they were in trouble.


	42. Stargazing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A SWTOR AU of Tom (as a Cathar) and Vik.

Her back was still hurt, and she was trying to hide it. Tom led her out into the field, all pretty and deep green under the night sky. And she _still_ huffed.  
  
“Babe,” Tom said, putting his hands on her shoulders, “sit your pretty ass down.”  
  
 _Huff,_ but she sat.  
  
“Good girl.” He settled in behind her, pulling her into his lap so she leaned back into his chest and he couldn’t help but purr. What? He was a Cathar, jackass.  
  
Vik looked up at the stars. Tom just looked at her, but he assumed the stars were pretty, too.


	43. Sadja-gazing

She had three options: blanket, grass, or Voros. _Duh._  
  
Sadja went and crawled right on top of him, stretching out on his chest while he lay there on his back. He huffed.  
  
“What we looking at, Voros?”  
  
 _Grrhmm,_ he said. Sadja craned her neck back to look upside-down at his face, one of her pointed ears tickling his scratchy chin. All he looked at was her. His hands started getting all questy.  
  
“You were gonna tell me what humans see in the stars,” she teased, taking one hand and directing it farther south.  
  
 _Hrmph._ “You changed the menu.”  
  
She snickered.


	44. Constellations

“If you told the Duckling _THAT’S_ a dragon he’d bite you. It’s a two-pronged worm.”  
  
_Huff._ “I didn’t make it up.” Voros put a finger on the book, then nodded at the sky again. “That’s Orion.”  
  
“All I see’s his belt.”  
  
“You would.”  
  
She looked at the book again. “Whassat?”  
  
“Ursa Major.”  
  
“Bless you.”  
  
“It’s a bear.”  
  
“That is _not_ a bloody bear.”  
  
He tapped the book. “That’s a dipper.”  
  
“I’ll be fricked _it actually is a dipper.”_  
  
“Glad one met your expectations.” He was _smiling,_ all subtle and lopsided.  
  
“I like you cheeky, Voros. Do it more often.”  
  
_Grunt._


	45. Checkmate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill.

They were the weirdest band of buddies to have on a night like this, probably _ever_ , but hey, Tom could deal with that.

He led the way into the tavern. They were stopping by some kind of big city here in the Southern Empire (what _he_ considered southern, anyway – which meant just north of Kemhet), and yeah, Kye was being all mopey again, so it was his idea to do something to cheer him up. Take his mind off it. Go out for a night on the town.

Then he decided to ask Caiden to come along. Then Fintan overheard, and Tom went ahead and grabbed Surandil on the way out, too, so that was everybody who wasn’t busy. Tom mentally dubbed them the Bored Brigade and they all set off.

“Who other than Caid is hungry?” Tom said as he walked, turning around to walk backward so he could look at everybody while he did.

Caiden huffed.

“I could eat,” Kye said with a vague shrug, his eyes still generally pointed in the direction of _down_.

“Uh-huh,” Fintan said, fingers busy getting his pipe lit.

Surandil was busy walking with his nose stuck in a book.

So Tom didn’t ask again and led the way over to the nearest tavern. Fancy-ass place, all decorated with banners of various bright colors, shiny cups and plates and utensils, and did it ever smell amazing in here. It also smelled mind-blowingly _expensive_ , but whatever, Tom had money and it wasn’t like he was saving up.

After they all got seated around a table made of smooth, rich mahogany that was probably worth more than half the orphanage Tom grew up in, a waiter came and told them lots of _bla bla bla_ and Tom barely heard two words of it before he dropped some bags of coins under the guy’s face so he scurried off.

Kye blinked after the waiter, frowning. “Glad he didn’t ask _me_ ,” he murmured morosely, piling his hands up in front of him and leaning far enough over to rest his chin on them like an upset puppy. “I don’t think they serve blood and demon flesh here.”

“Oh, c’mon, Kye, you’ve been around here long enough to know a _few_ foods,” Tom said with a frown – and then shut up long enough for a serving girl (whoa, pretty) to show up and leave them all drinks.

The food came out shortly thereafter, which was… a _lot_. Meats, salads, sweets, an entire giant sturgeon…

And a few weirder things. One meat platter had a few things still alive on it, _that_ was new. Slimy things, little fish and stuff. Tom made a face at them and kept his attention on Kye, who stared at everything and looked amazingly overwhelmed. Okay, maybe he should’ve paid attention to what he’d actually ordered.

Or, well, paid for… Without bothering himself enough to order.

So Tom shrugged, grabbed the sturgeon platter, and scooted it closer to get himself a big chunk of it because it smelled absolutely amazing. Then there was venison, then there was…

“Grab something, Kye, c’mon,” he said, shooting Kye a look.

But Kye was busy watching everybody else, all of whom seemed more interested in those live things than actually eating some of this food because apparently the smell of it wasn’t driving them crazy and making their mouths water like him.

“Fascinating,” said Surandil, as Caiden picked one up (was it a fish, or what? It looked like a fish) between his fingers. “I believe these are a type of exotic creature we are meant to kill ourselves in order to savor its meat at its freshest, as some cultures bel—”

Caiden, being Caiden, just put the whole fricking squirming thing in his mouth and swallowed it.

“Oh, man, _Caid_ — seriously?” Tom blurted, even if he’d seen that coming ten leagues away.

“That… also seems effective, if you are not disturbed by eating something alive,” Surandil finished, barely losing his composure for a second. Which made it all worth it, though, really.

Fintan puffed harder on his pipe. “Disgustin’.”

“That isn’t _that_ weird to kill stuff off your own plate…” Kye muttered, picking at some fennel garnish. “Why’s this growing funny green hair?”

“It isn’t— but, Kye, buddy,” Tom said as he forked a slice of venison onto Kye’s plate so he’d start eating it absently (which he did, by the way; plan worked great), “maybe it’s not all that weird in the Underworld, but people up here don’t actually do that kind of stuff very often.”

“I noticed,” Kye mumbled. “Makes me feel like I’m weird.”

Tom opened his mouth, paused, frowned, and decided he was really bad at conversations like this. Which Caiden probably sensed, or whatever, because he went and (for once) broke the silence with a harmless comment.

“It’s not bad,” Caiden said with a shrug when everyone else was still staring at him over the fish.

So that went great, as you can imagine. By the time they were done, everybody was at least reasonably full and Caiden had put everything else someplace, gods knew where he found room for it all. Although he was ridiculously tall, so that probably helped.

Tom’s next genius (what? He had good ideas _sometimes_ , alright?) idea was chess. Except once they got chess sets and got everything set up at a table big enough for all of them, they had to split up into pairs.

“I’m sittin’ out,” Fintan said instantly, eying the lot of them. “I’ll kick yer arse at a dice game, but this? Bah. It’s a game fer human kings an’ elf ninnies.”

“It’s tactics,” Caiden said.

“Ever played chess, Surandil?” Tom asked, flashing him a quick grin as he set up a pair of boards.

“I have indeed. I admit, however, I am not particularly well-practiced, and I’d enjoy the challenge.”

“Great. I’ll play with Kye.” Tom set up the last of Kye’s side of the board. Behind them, Kye had his face near the table, looking at each individual piece with more interest than Tom saw most people look at absolutely anything.

“They’re cute,” he said, picking up a knight. “I like the little horses the best.”

“Of course you do, because those are the knights.” Tom winked. “That means they _are_ the best.”

“Actually, the queen’s the best,” Caiden pointed out maybe a little too flatly for Tom’s taste. It was true, but please, come on. Knights.

“I always knew there was a ladies-man under that stoic exterior, Caid.”

_Grunt._

Tom showed Kye the ropes, which was easier than he expected, really. He figured it out better than most humans Tom had tried to teach.

“The knights move two in any direction, then one to the side,” he said, demonstrating with a piece. “It represents, y’know, what I do on the battlefield. Charge and wheel, charge and wheel… it’s how knights fight on horseback.”

Kye made a face. “Okay.”

Meanwhile, Caiden and Surandil were having a staring contest with their board. Staring just as hard as they freaking could. Whenever Caiden moved, Surandil would steeple his fingers, and whenever Surandil moved, Caiden would rumble thoughtfully and occasionally lean back and rub his chin and look like he had a couple dozen very real lives riding on his shoulders and he couldn’t screw this up.

Holy shit, it was _serious_.

Playing with Kye wasn’t really playing at all, and by the time it was over, at least Kye had learned enough to ask how in the living hell anyone told the difference between a stalemate and a checkmate, while Caiden told Surandil he was way too willing to throw away his men (he meant “pieces;” seriously, this guy was so used to running command he couldn’t get his head out of the game— or _into_ the game? Whatever).

That was just before he stopped his queen near Surandil’s king and said, with that perfect hint of smugness that only Caiden could really pull off, “Checkmate.”

The frown Surandil wore then was absolutely _priceless_ and Tom would treasure it forever.

On the way back, everyone seemed a lot happier. Fintan got to tell Surandil all about what he thought he did wrong and then they started bickering about it, Kye got to ask both Tom and Caiden incessant questions about chess and tell them about how the _svartalfar_ , the dark elves, played it in Nidavellir on weird-ass twisty tables with much bigger pieces, and…

And because he was a child, or so some people liked to tell him, Tom grinned, glanced back at everyone else, and said, “Race ya back to camp.”

Then he took off without warning. Hey, it wasn’t like he would’ve _lost_ even if he’d given them a head start, anyway.


	46. Lucky Charms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Modern day Wulfgard AU for a Patreon prompt fill.
> 
> Prompt: Kye encounters Leprechaun.

This world was really weird.

They’d only gotten here recently thanks to a whole bunch of portal mishap from Surandil. Now here they were in some absurd world with all this technology like he’d never seen before. After getting a place to stay, they had all hunkered down for the night.

And now it was morning. Really early, if the pale light from the overcast sky was anything to go by, but Kye was hungry. So he got up, sneaked downstairs, and made his way into the kitchen.

It was a nice kitchen. There were all these devices in there that were supposed to be used for cooking. Heating food and stuff. Kye didn’t really get it. There was also a tall, loud, white chest that kept food cold, which might’ve been even weirder.

Then there was the cupboard beside it. Kye had no idea how any of this stuff worked, so he just went to the cupboard instead and fished around at the various brightly-colored boxes that Surandil had called ‘cereal.’ The stuff in the boxes, anyway. And then also in bags. Why everything was in so many little packages, he didn’t know.

The red box with rainbows on it seemed nice, so he got that one, poured some into a bowl with milk, and sat there at the kitchen island on a high stool to start eating, tail waving around behind him. Holding a spoon with the long claws of his left hand proved pretty much impossible, so he used his right.

Kye turned the cereal box around and looked at the funny red-haired guy on it. Then turned it around again and started reading the back, full of little puzzles. They were sweet and they were called Lucky Charms, and it wasn’t like he didn’t always need a little bit of luck, so maybe he’d picked well.

Heavy footfalls came down the stairs, and Kye glanced over his shoulder to see Caiden walking in, wearing a fuzzy green robe that was big enough to pretty much swallow anybody else whole.

“Morning,” he said, going straight to the fridge. That was the big white cold chest thing, the ‘fridge.’ Or at least Tom had called it that.

“Hi,” Kye replied. “You’re up really early.”

“So’re you.”

Kye shrugged. Okay, that was a fair point. He went back to reading the back of the cereal box, glancing at Caiden occasionally while he got out all kinds of things and started cooking using that electric heat thing.

“Caiden?” Kye said.

 _Grunt?_ was his response, while cracking an egg.

“What’s a ‘leprechaun?’”

“Trouble.”

Some pans sizzled, and Kye smelled meat and eggs. When he glanced over his shoulder, Caiden swallowed something and tossed some eggshells in the trash.

“Aren’t you not supposed to eat raw eggs?” Kye asked.

“Yeah. Don’t do it.”

Kye frowned thoughtfully.

“Leprechauns are spirits. Fey. Troublemakers, like most of their kind…”

“Aren’t elves technically fey, too?”

“That’s right.”

“So…” Kye scratched his head. “I guess that explains a lot.”

Caiden snorted.

The glass sliding doors nearby suddenly slid open, and in stepped Tom, wearing barely enough pants to be decent, covered in dirt and some blood. He fired a two-fingered salute off his forehead, put on a lopsided grin, and slid the door shut behind him.

“Hey hey, good morning, I swear to Athena I didn’t kill anybody,” he said.

“How do you know that?” Caiden asked a bit flatly.

Tom shrugged. “Because I’m starving,” he said, eying the nearby chunk of raw bacon before Caiden dumped something on a plate and slid in Tom’s direction, so he promptly started eating.

Kye picked one of the pastel marshmallows out of his cereal, spearing it on a claw, and stared at it.

“So leprechauns make cereal?”

Tom almost choked.

“I doubt there even _are_ leprechauns here,” Caiden said.

Something pulled his tail.

Kye’s tail, because he was the only one there with a tail, obviously. He started and went rigid with a yelp – he _hated_ anyone pulling his tail – and took a heavy swing with his left-hand claws behind him at whoever did it.

He caught nothing but air.

When he looked up again, Tom and Caiden were both looking at him. Tom with his mouth full, one brow quirked, and Caiden with his brow all slanted and wearing a scowl.

“Sorry,” Kye blurted, though he didn’t really know what he was sorry for, but it seemed like the right thing to say for some reason. “I – um, something… pulled my tail.”

Caiden huffed and turned back to the food. Tom shrugged and resumed eating.

Kye sat up and spun around on the stool, scanning the room, but he didn’t see anything. He did hear movement upstairs, so everybody else was probably getting up now.

“Hey, Kye,” Tom said, and Kye turned the stool his way again just in time for Tom to wink and say, “Maybe it was a leprechaun.”


	47. Better Than One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill. Prompt was, "How about a training flashback? Some nice (or not so nice) nostalgia for Tom or Caiden learning an important lesson in their youth."
> 
> I had SO much fun writing this one; thank you for the fun prompt!

It’d taken plenty of insisting, but Warren – _Father_ ; whatever – finally agreed to spar with him. Warren liked to treat him like a child. Which, hey, he was. Sure. He was, what, in his teens? Mid teens maybe. Who was keeping count? High-tailing it from the orphanage didn’t help, he hadn’t exactly kept up with time.

But he was totally more mature than anybody gave him credit for, and the streets were mean, and he knew how to _fight_. Warren needed to see that.

So here he was, a kid taking on a middle-aged knight. This would go great.

Knights _did_ usually start their training even earlier than this, though, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t _capable_ …

Anyway, Warren led the way from one of the manor’s many back doors, out into a sandy training field in a small courtyard. The manor was _great_ , by the way; basically the complete opposite of all the nothing he’d had growing up as everyone’s least favorite street urchin.

Here, though, there was nothing but gritty sand, some grass and dirt surrounding it, and more stonework everywhere else.

And a pair of tall dragon statues on either side of the long training field. Tom stopped and stared up at them, trying not to grin. Then wondering why and grinning anyway.

“Pay attention,” Warren said, and Tom looked at him just in time to not get hit in the face by a long wooden training sword Warren tossed to him from a rack on one edge of the field.

Catching it, Tom gave it a quick twirl. “Fancy,” he said, looking at the little wooden hilt and simple carved crosspiece. Even the training sticks had to be detailed for knights, apparently.

“We will spar,” Warren said, settling into a combat stance. Feet spread, planted, sword gripped in both hands before him, blade forward. “For now, we will have three rounds.”

Tom mimicked the stance, another grin tugging at his lips.

“Begi—”

Tom charged.

Things didn’t go too well for him, all things considered. He struck first, Warren easily blocked, Tom swung again – and Warren sidestepped, bringing a sharp blow down on Tom’s lower back that made him yelp and stumble.

“Round one,” Warren said flatly.

Lip twitching, Tom straightened up – _Ow, ow, what_ _’d he hit?_ – and gripped the training sword again.

“I know of your temper,” Warren went on. “I was told of it fairly extensively. _I_ will teach you discipline. Give in to your temper, and you will always lose. Strike early, and you will always lose. Remain always offensive, and you will _also_ lose. You must defend yourself and know when to strike, not strike continuously, or your enemy will break through with a fatal blow as you tire, turning the tides of your fight.”

Warren came first this time, without warning. Tom managed to catch the sword once – slid his wooden blade along it, freed it, and tried a strike aimed at Warren’s arm, only for Warren’s sword to swing around in the blink of an eye and hit him square in the neck.

That almost knocked Tom off-balance and into the sand, because it didn’t help that he was a lanky bastard still growing into how crazy tall he was apparently going to be (cool, right?).

And it _really_ pissed him off. Heat flooded through him as his blood caught fire. He sucked a hard breath through his nose, set his jaw, and gripped that training sword so hard it hurt.

“Defend yourself,” Warren said, pacing around Tom in a circle. He kept talking, too – saying more things. Tom didn’t hear a word of it. He caught the word ‘discipline,’ the word ‘calm,’ before he turned.

He straightened up, spun to face him, and – both hands on his sword, holding hard enough to strangle most any living thing – started attacking.

Warren staggered back, put on the defensive. Tom hit again – again, and again, as fast as that one sword could go. Bared his teeth and walked forward, sword beating so hard against Warren’s that Warren started taking steps back, himself.

More words. Tom didn’t hear them. Warren said Tom’s name. Once, twice. Loudly. Told him to stop. Tom didn’t listen. Couldn’t hear him.

Swords clacking against each other, snapping loudly out into the cool morning air, Tom beat Warren all the way back to that rack of training weapons. Warren got off one swing, down toward Tom’s legs. Tom took it. It didn’t even make him stumble. He didn’t feel it at all. Not like the blows before.

Releasing his left hand from his would-be weapon, Tom reached to that rack and pulled another sword from it. One in each hand, he whirled on Warren before he had a chance to attack again.

With a roar, Tom did it again. Blow by blow, he drove Warren beyond the edge of the training field. Warren got desperate. Tried to dodge, tried to kick, move one hand off his sword and grab Tom’s arm. Do _something_. Stop him somehow.

He couldn’t. Every time he tried, one of two twin blades was there to stop him, make him rethink it and put him back on the defensive.

Tom turned on him with a snarl, didn’t give him an inch. Not until Warren’s defense broke, and Tom’s right-hand sword snapped hard down on Warren’s neck. It was his turn to stumble now, from the sheer force of the blow.

For half a second, Tom lifted those dual swords again. But he swallowed, took another deep breath, and lowered his hands to his sides again. Swords still held tight. Still ready. Chest heaving, lip twitching over his teeth.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Warren righted himself. For a moment, he stared right at Tom, eyes wide, sweat shining on his forehead. ‘Surprise’ seemed like a weak word for it. Warren’s gaze flicked to Tom’s dual swords, which he furrowed his brow at, then to Tom’s face – then to his eyes.

They lingered there. On his eyes. He looked almost afraid.

“I _told_ you,” Tom growled, “I _know_ how to fight.”


	48. Baby's First Tom Drake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... and the baby is not sure what to make of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patreon prompt fill: Caiden holds a baby. Doesn't have to be his own.
> 
> I got strangely into this one just building up a premise. Enjoy!

Whatever had happened here looked bad. Really bad. Plenty of the buildings sat mostly destroyed, some little better than piles of ash and crisps and others with windows broken and doors beaten down. Tom sniffed, smelled traces of blood, fear, and way too much death. He frowned.

Caiden put one boot up on the tall stone fountain in the town square, eye scanning the area before he said darkly, “Undead.”

“How d’you know?” Fintan asked, huffing and puffing trying to keep up with everyone else. Tom had already offered to carry him, and he’d gotten a sharp kick in the shin for it (it’d _hurt_ too; don’t laugh). Those stubby legs were deceiving.

Caiden answered that with a low grunt even Tom didn’t have much trouble translating.

Not that he was listening all that well, because he heard something else, somewhere in that wrecked town. It sounded like crying. Tilting his head, Tom tried to focus – and figured nobody else could hear it right now.

They all started talking, Fintan speaking in a poorly hushed tone like he was afraid of waking those aforementioned dead, but Tom didn’t listen. He started walking, focused on that sound, stepping over a body or two here and there, some of them gnawed on.

_Eugh._

The crying got louder, to the point that the others stopped asking him just where in the hell he was going. Not that they weren’t used to him doing things like this – suddenly walking off after some sound or scent or movement in the dark no one else could pick up.

Tom ducked under what was left of a doorway, the house falling down low over the entrance and probably helping to keep any undead out since whatever’d happened. He came out into a house that looked not too far out of disarray, considering what’d happened. The boards on the windows told something about that.

Too bad it was still empty of actual people, except for what was now all too apparently a baby crying.

Tom sniffed just once, eyes cutting to some stairs to his left. They’d been knocked down, a railing hanging there precariously. Someone had _really_ not wanted clumsy undead getting up there.

He, on the other hand, wasn’t clumsy at all. So while Caiden played support pillar with the rubble in the door and held it up enough for everyone to just walk under it, Tom leapt neatly up to the bottom step – which tried to give way under him – and made his way up.

The crying was working hard on deafening him now and set his ears to ringing, but Tom stopped in front of a locked door, took a step back, and kicked it in.

Yeah, that really didn’t scare the baby that was already screaming. Okay, it did. It pitched into a high wail that made Tom groan and plug up his ears.

A cradle stood on the far end of the room, with a pile of wood and nailed planks so thoroughly covering the one nearby window that Tom barely recognized it as a window at all. Ears still plugged, Tom padded quietly over to that cradle and peered inside.

Yep, definitely a baby. _What_ _’d you expect, Dragon?_

“Shh, hey, it’s okay,” Tom said, taking his fingers out of his ears. How did you talk to a baby, exactly? Oh crap he was bad at this.

The little squirmy baby all swaddled in old grey cloth took one look at him and, for a second, stared with wide eyes. At, you know, the guy with short hair spiking angrily, gold-yellow eyes, and grinning at it sheepishly with all his big, sharp canines.

So he probably didn’t really calm it down a lot. Definitely didn’t, in fact. Because it screwed up its little squishy baby face, took a breath, and screamed itself red.

_Shit._ Language. He _was_ around a baby right now.

Tom carefully reached into the cradle and gathered up the screaming kid, made his way back to the stairs, and crouched at the bottom-most one that didn’t sound like it was announcing it’d drop his ass right to the floor if he sat on it.

Everyone was already down there, all looking very curious and a little baffled in their own ways (it’d have been hilarious on any other occasion), while Tom hunkered on that step and stared at them while the baby screamed and screamed.

“Toldja he didn’t eat it,” Sadja said, nudging Fintan, who passed her a handful of coins.

_What the hell, Finny._

Tom caught himself bristling a little. “Ha ha, laugh at the werewolf— snacks really shouldn’t make jokes ya know. Now somebody want to actually give me a fricking hand here?”

_Before my ears explode._

Caiden shouldered his way past the others and reached up to take the baby, leaving Tom to rub his temples for a second and… realized it’d stopped screaming.

Tom blinked and jumped down from his perch, giving Caiden a look. “What, you got a magic touch?”

“Maybe. Or maybe you’ve never held a baby before,” Caiden replied, standing there with a teeny tiny baby in one arm and his other hand near its face. His? Hers? Tom had no idea. Anyway, the baby’s little hand wiggled around until it found one of Caiden’s fingers and held on. And started making all those burbling little baby noises.

Tom tilted his head.

“I’ve _seen_ people hold babies, okay?”

“You weren’t doing it right.” Caiden nodded down at the way he had his arm.

_Of course he_ _’s good at that, he’s good at everything._ Tom rolled his eyes.

“Youngest sibling, remember?” he reminded in a mutter. “Not like I went to family get-togethers, either…”

“I am assuming Caiden was not,” Surandil put in.

Caiden grunted something affirmative, shooting the baby a look when it started sticking his finger in its mouth.

“You humans are even giant as _babies_ ,” Fintan said, craning his neck up to look at Caiden, while Kye moseyed over and stared with eyes bigger than the baby’s had been when it’d first seen Tom, like this was the single most fascinating thing he’d ever seen in his _I-don_ _’t-even-know-how-old-I-am_ life.

Except, you know, when the baby started making awful noises again. Because it’d probably done something Tom didn’t want to think about. And smelled to Mount Olympos.

Sadja sidled over to join Tom instead, while Caiden and Fintan apparently got busy taking care of this baby, and Surandil mostly watched out of his weird detached fascination with everything, and Kye tagged along looking like he was in puppy love.

“I don’t want one anymore,” Sadja said.

“Why not?”

“It’s loud and it smells. And it just peed on Beaver.” She made a face.

It was true, and Fintan was busy grumbling swears into his white beard.

“I dunno,” Tom said, glancing at her and trying not to laugh at the way she scrunched her nose up at the assorted odors, “Caiden looks pretty good at it.”

“ _He_ can have one, then.”

Tom quirked a brow and gave her a sideways look that said way more than any one comment he could put into words. Sadja shrank a little at first, until she snapped one leg out and kicked him in the shin. _Hard._ Again.

Tom yelped.


End file.
